Between The Lines: Allies
by Anti-Kryptonite
Summary: It's like her kidnapper took her and tied her up and bled her dry of everything she knows. Everything she is. Her effectiveness. Her ability to reach the Troubled. Her fearlessness. With gashes in her wrists and thoughts bouncing aimlessly inside her skull, Audrey wonders if all she is capable of doing is failing. Season 3
1. Chapter 1

A/N: So it's been SO long and I'm sorry about that. Unfortunately, real life doesn't prioritize fanfiction like it should and I've been super busy. However, I've really been looking forward to getting to delve into season 3, so I've worked on this a bit at a time. I should warn you, however, that because I haven't had time to really sit down and rewatch the whole season, some little things might be wrong-like how many days Audrey has left in what episode and when exactly they learn everything about the Bolt Gun Killer and stuff like that. Hopefully, you'll all be gentle with me and pretend they're very well thought out changes due to this being an AU. :)

It's strongly recommended that you read the first two stories in the Between The Lines series or it might get confusing for you!

I hope you all enjoy, and feel free to let me know what you think of it!

Disclaimer: Haven was created and written by others; I'm just borrowing it because I love it so much! No copyright infringement is intended.

* * *

Her head is pounding, there's a bruise blooming on her cheek, and her wrists are screaming against the raw stitching of the glass clutched in her hand. She can't think, can't plan, all her thoughts swimming into a muddled haze shot through with lightning-sharp bolts of pain.

(Nathan. He'll come for her. He won't feel the pain turning her slow and weak. He'll be strong and steadfast and immovable.)

The voice in the neighboring room has gone silent, the steady shaking of a whisper to make her strong and give her purpose accelerated to a climax of terror and then silenced with sickening finality. She's alone. She's shaking. She's afraid.

(Nathan. He'll come for her. He never considers the dangers to himself. He'll walk right into a hail of bullets to save her and he won't care if the cost is his own life.)

If her kidnapper comes back, if he returns with his fists and his blinding lights and his disorienting questions…with Roslyn's blood on his hands…with his shattering revelations… She can't do it. She's not together enough, not _cohesive_ enough, to hold herself together under any more strain. She saws faster with her shard of glass, careless of whether she splits open rope or flesh so long as she's not helpless anymore.

(Nathan. He'll come for her, and _she_ cares. She cares maybe too much. She cares that he'll come because there's nothing she wants more than to be surrounded by his tentative embrace and his maple syrup smell. She cares that he'll bleed and hurt and die for her because she can't lose him. She can't be responsible for his pain.)

When her head lolls back against the wood holding her upright, the room flickers around her, swirls in heavy colors and lingering smoke. The diamond-sharp pain of glass against skin shocks her back to temporary alertness. Then there's a final slash and her hands fall free.

(Nathan. He'll come for her, of course he will, but now she can go to _him_, and that's safer all around.)

* * *

Since she's come to Haven, everything has been crystal clear. Oh, there are a multitude of murky mysteries and a plethora of confusing questions about her past and who she is and how she's connected to the Troubles. But each day in Haven has a startling clarity to it. She remembers everything. She's been mentally present for each situation that occurs. Each Trouble clicks inside her mind with the _rightness_ of a missing piece in an intriguing puzzle.

When everyone else has been dulled, when their memories and perceptions have been tweaked and their surroundings altered, Audrey has always remained clear and level-headed and unaffected. She _knows_ when something's wrong, and has never fallen into the shifting trap of a Trouble. In fact, she's grown so used to being the one who _knows_ what's right (not about herself, not about who she is, but _always_ about Haven and her friends) that she's forgotten what it's like to be disoriented.

To be shaky and uncertain.

To fear for her own life.

She's forgotten that her immunity to the Troubles does not make her invulnerable to a simple concussion, or to shock, or to trauma.

It's been so long since she's done anything but just press 1 to call Nathan that she's afraid (_afraid_ so that her hands shake and she has to crouch as her knees go weak) she won't remember his number.

But no. This is one of the things she always remembers. Something she'll never forget (_can't_ forget, not anything about Nathan, even if she apparently forgot whatever she felt for whoever the Colorado Kid was…_is_?). Her fingers dance over the phone's digits like drunken ballerinas, but she doesn't even have time to be afraid he won't answer before his voice sounds in her ear.

Taut with tension, quivering with focus, but _his_ voice.

(It's so beautiful that she gasps out a sob of relief.)

"Nathan," she manages to get out past the definite lump in her throat.

"Parker!" he shouts.

And she's not afraid anymore.

(She may not know what she is, but there's one thing she knows above all: Nathan will always come for her.)

* * *

He comes for her.

She's barefoot and breathless, then screaming and terrified, a terror that collapses in on itself like a sinkhole when Duke whispers in her ear and takes his hand away from her mouth. And then it all stops. Everything goes quiet and still. The pounding in her head dulls into a distant distraction and the searing pain in her wrists fades. All with one word. One name. His voice.

"Audrey!"

There could be shattered glass decorating the space between them and Audrey still would fling herself forward. The chasm between them shrinks into nothing (he's holstering a gun and there's a glint of gold at his hip; none of it matters next to his solid, steadfast presence) and his arms are open. Enveloping. He smells of pine needles and maple syrup (Maine and Haven; _home_). He looks as if he breathes his first breath ever when she touches him (there's a bruise on his cheek to match her own and she doesn't care because he's alive and _here_). His entire body shudders as she goes up on her tiptoes to wrap her arms around him, to sink into him along every inch of her petrified, hurting flesh. He's warm, so warm she wants to burrow under his skin, to be protected by the strong beat of his heart and the unyielding sturdiness of his bones; wants to pour her Trouble-immunity through his veins so that he can feel sunlight and a baby's weight and a dog's fur.

They've hugged three times before this, just enough for her to grow endlessly addicted to the utterly gentle way he closes his arms around her. The reverence with which he enfolds her, the tentativeness with which he spreads his hands over her back. The long head-to-toe shudder that sweeps across his frame, turning him pliable under her touch.

But this hug is different, something extra added to it.

Because when Audrey buries her face against his neck, Nathan bends and folds and turns inward until his face nestles in her hair. Unsteady breaths feather heat along her throat, and she has never felt so safe.

So loved.

(And for just this moment, awash with adrenaline and relief, she doesn't make herself turn away from this feeling. This thought. This admission.)

But Roslyn isn't safe yet. Audrey promised she'd help and she couldn't before, but now Nathan and Duke are here and she can be strong once more.

So she pulls back, and Nathan's arms fall away (he never clings, never resists, never _holds on_) and she's Audrey Parker, cop and savior and Trouble-whisperer once again. The weight of it all drapes itself over her with the ease of long habit, settling into worn grooves.

And here, a step removed from Nathan (even though her hands grip his arm, unable to completely divorce herself from him), her fear is creeping back in, spilling out of her mouth in long, panicked sentences.

"You have no idea what we went through down there," she says, and wishes she hadn't when Nathan's face goes shuttered and tight.

"You're right, I don't, and I'm sorry," he says. Her hands clench spasmodically over his arm (he can't feel it, doesn't receive the tactile apology, his coat sleeve like a wall between them), but there's no time to fix what she just caused.

"This is Wesley Toomis," Nathan says. "He's Troubled."

Just that, and everything else will have to wait. This, at least, she can do. This is something she knows. This is a task she can accomplish for Nathan, for Duke, for the town.

(It's the only thing about herself she really, truly knows.)

Audrey lets her hands slip away from Nathan as she turns to Wesley.

(But Nathan comes to her once more. He takes the coat off his own back and wraps her in it, and the fear stays manageable.)

* * *

But nothing goes as it should.

She can't fix Wesley's Trouble, can't talk him into acceptance, can't do anything but stand there, useless, as Nathan convinces Wesley to give his own life up to impossibility and the unknown. She's mute (struck dumb by both her failure and the return of the concussion's swirling effects) as Duke shoves at Nathan, some latent ferocity crackling between them, undimmed by all the ways she's tried to reconcile them.

She's horrified and guilty and ashamed as the smell of charred human flesh chokes her and floods her mouth with bile.

She promised Roslyn she'd save her. She promised they'd get out. She promised her everything would be okay.

(She lied.)

It's like her kidnapper took her and tied her up and bled her dry of everything she knows. Everything she is. Her effectiveness. Her ability to reach the Troubled. Her fearlessness. The one certainty she had about that old article that first kept her here in town.

With gashes in her wrists and thoughts bouncing aimlessly inside her skull, Audrey wonders if all she is capable of doing is failing.

* * *

"Someone should be taking care of you now," Nathan says as he pulls his coat tighter over her shoulders (she wishes he weren't so careful not to let his fingers brush her skin). For just an instant, the coat between them, they stand in a pseudo-embrace. An almost that teeters between them as much as any _almost_ does between them.

Audrey wants nothing more than to tip forward against his chest, just to breathe in his scent and soak up his warmth and bask in his implacable surety. But she is numb and held together only by a breath, swaying so that she feels that one hasty movement will cause her joints to unravel and her bones to crumble and her skin to disintegrate until she falls in a pile of macabre remains to match Roslyn's.

The moment stretches and fades, and Nathan takes a step away.

Before she can pull herself from her strange lethargy, Nathan's led her to a couch and sat her down. When he sits beside her, he keeps a few inches between them. Audrey stares at that space, but for all she tells herself to cross that gulf, she can't make herself move. Words bottle up in her throat, a plea for Nathan to do what she can't, to draw closer, snarling and tangling in on itself until she's trapped in silence and Nathan continues to give her space she doesn't want.

Finally, using all the energy left to her, Audrey ignores the room spinning around her, and she tips her head up to meet Nathan's eyes. His gaze is intent, solid, unwavering, an anchor that tethers her to reality (to consciousness; to sanity).

Then the Teagues burst on the scene and the moment passes, leaving her once more lost and adrift. Dave and Vince talk and talk but say nothing, give nothing away, and a fire crackles to life in Audrey's frozen form (a fire ignited by Roslyn's smoldering ashes).

"Did Lucy love the Colorado Kid?" she demands, and only realizes what she gave away (what she implied; what wall she's built between them) when Nathan goes stiff at her side, his usual quiet transformed into a void sucking down all reaction (but betraying so much more than he probably realizes).

The Teagues lie (they always do, she thinks; she cannot trust them), and for all that she just lost by voicing the question, she gains nothing.

Once again, she fails.

* * *

They dig up the grave (the fact that it even exists and its specific location both nuggets of information doled out so sparsely, so strictly and deceptively haphazardly, by Dave and Vince). It's a coffin, and Audrey doesn't remember ever being squeamish, but her stomach twists on itself as they lift up the lid. She doesn't want to see this (body or not, it will shake her already shaky world on its tilting exist). But she doesn't look away (she _needs_ to know if there's a man out there she loved; loves; could love).

It's empty.

Of course it's empty. Of course that article has not run out of ways to rattle her. Witnesses with no memory. Photographers with no camera. A boy who's not what he seems. The primary focus, of course, herself but not her. And now, after all the leads and dead ends, the body itself. The victim. The Colorado Kid.

Alive. Missing.

(The man she loved? A man she could, or should, or _does_ still love, or love again?)

It's too much.

Audrey hates being weak. She despises falling apart when there are still things to do (find her kidnapper) and clues to follow ('find the Hunter' in her own urgent handwriting). But this one time, her wrists stinging, her feet aching, her throat clogged with remnants of smoke, her face bruised…this one time Audrey falters. And then, at Nathan's tentative hand on her shoulder, she crumples.

Just shuts her eyes and lets her balance falter so that she tips back and leans against Nathan's lean form.

He's warm. He's solid. He's enduring.

(How can she possibly love another man when there is Nathan?)

(How can she turn away from her love for the Colorado Kid when she wants to believe that even with another personality, she would still remember and be drawn to and trust Nathan?)

Too much, too much, too much.

Audrey shuts her eyes and pretends that she can let it all go.

* * *

The mess her kidnapper made in her apartment is enough to bring Audrey to a halt. Nathan doesn't stop at her side; he just walks straight past her and begins tidying. Picks up the fallen chairs, places broken dishes in the trash and whole ones in the sink, closes her cabinets, rolls up police tape. Audrey watches his efficient movements, admiring his resolve in light of her own momentum fading to nothing, drained of any impetus of her own.

"Why don't you sit down?" he finally says, pausing his clean-up long enough to draw her inside (once more with a hand on her shoulder, his thick coat between them) and close the door on the cold sea air. "Do you want to change?" he asks as he directs her to the couch.

"You still have a guest room," she observes aloud. "Maybe…maybe I could stay with you tonight? It wasn't so bad when we did that before, was it? I mean, apart from the whole psycho killer after you."

Nathan regards her for a long moment before he gives himself permission to sit beside her (that same chasm of distance between them; she wonders when she began noticing just how careful he always is not to push boundaries).

"Parker," he says, and just the sound of her name in his voice is enough to stitch a few pieces of herself back together. (Under that reaction, like a dark shadow, she finds herself wondering what the sound of the Colorado Kid's voice calling her _Lucy_ would do to her. Nothing? Or everything?)

"Nathan," she says abruptly, aware that he doesn't look as if he's ready to stand up and drive them to his small, comfortable home, "I don't want to be here."

"I know," he says. "But you have to come back eventually. You think it'll be any easier if you keep putting it off?"

"Easier on me _tonight_," she says with a weak smile. But he's right. It will always be hard to reclaim her sense of safety here, today or tomorrow or next week. Still, she longs for the safe haven of Nathan's home, his collection of sci-fi movies and the scent of pancakes and the simple but powerful assurance of his presence.

"You don't let anything stop you," Nathan says, and he sounds so certain, so unerring, that she cannot doubt him.

"Nathan," she says in a soft, blurred tone. She's not even sure, exactly, what she means to say, to ask, to _do_, but he looks away.

"You should change," he says. "Do the bandages on your wrists need changed?"

"No."

Retreating to the bathroom, Audrey lets Nathan make his own slow retreat back to cleaning (to giving back as much of what was taken from her as he can).

When she steps into the shower, the hot water is cleansing enough to loosen her coiled muscles, though it makes the gashes on her wrists burn. Audrey scrubs off the feel of her captor's fists and the stench of Roslyn's body, charred to ash, and the grimy remnants of fear. Ordinarily, she thinks she might have stayed under the water until it ran cold, but tonight, she's afraid that Nathan will leave if she stays away too long.

(She's afraid that the feel of the hot water will transform into the flames that ate up Roslyn's body, that took her away and ground everything she was into ash and soot and failure; into the flames that once licked at Nathan's skin and left ashen bodies behind like bizarre offerings.)

Nathan looks up from her coffeepot (filled with brewed coffee because apparently he is only confident around her with twin cups of coffee between them) when she emerges from the bathroom. Something in his face both tightens and softens at once in a way that makes Audrey's stomach flutter.

"I guess I _could_ use some more bandages," she finally says, fiddling with the long sleeves of her shirt to keep them from brushing against her scrapes.

Nathan swallows as he nods. Silently, he takes the supplies she gives him and once more sits beside her on the couch. He still leaves a gap between them; Audrey mostly closes it when she angles her knees toward him and offers her wrists.

It's too intense, too private, almost, to watch him as he focuses all his attention on her wrists (or maybe Audrey just isn't used to being able to look at him so long and so closely, accustomed instead to snatching sidelong glances and teasing eye-roll glimpses between sarcastic comments), so she looks around at her place. He's cleaned up most of the mess, though there's a pile of random items stacked up on the counter. She assumes it's the stuff he didn't know where to put.

"Thank you for cleaning up," she says in an attempt to distract them both from the play of his fingertips over her skin. (She remembers a scene almost identical to this one, in her office at the station, her own attention on raw wrists and Nathan's eyes fixed on her so that only her residual terror at seeing him in the Rev's power kept her from blushing.)

"I'm actually glad it was a mess," he says quietly. "If it hadn't been, I don't know if I would have realized right away that you'd been taken. I'm sorry I didn't—"

"No, Nathan." She puts her hand with its neat bandage over his, still working on her other wrist. No apologies. She can't bear to hear him apologize for something that doesn't matter, not now (not next to the fact that he's all that's holding her together).

Only when she takes her hand (reluctantly) off his does he continue working, a muscle in his jaw fluttering. Audrey watches it, hypnotized into a calm sort of lethargy by his delicate touch and the smell of him and the sight of his concern for her. She's not used to being on this side of their dynamic, hurt and vulnerable and reliant on his strength. Strangely, she doesn't mind it so much. She trusts him (unwaveringly). She relies on him (all the time).

She needs him.

But she is, she reminds herself, in a bad place right now, in no proper mindset to make a decision like the one her instincts are demanding, and Nathan is too affected by her. Too open to being dependent. Too vulnerable. If she does as she wants and leans into him, if she wraps her arms around him and buries her face in his neck…how could he turn away? He's always too willing to give her whatever she needs and he's so touch-starved, so hungry for tenderness of any sort… No. She can't do something now (ever) unless she's sure she can follow through on it.

(And if she couldn't save the Colorado Kid, if even running and fleeing Haven altogether didn't let Lucy keep him, then how can Audrey possibly think she can keep Nathan?)

"I'm glad you're here," she finally says, and it's honest even if it's not as much as she wants to say or do.

"I'm glad you're safe," he says, his tone so shaken Audrey knows she's right in not making any rash choices tonight. They're both too unsteady. Too fragile.

When the bandages are tied and she's cradling a cup of coffee in her cold hands, Nathan wavers. It's nothing in what he says, no particular movement or gesture, but he stands in front of her and his customary certainty seems to flag, just for an instant, in the flicker of his eyes.

"What else do you need?" he asks. "Do…do you need me to get Duke for you?"

"No."

Okay, so she won't fold herself into him and wrap his unfailing loyalty around her like armor, but she doesn't have to do _nothing_ either.

He watches her as she stands and digs out an extra blanket and pillow. "Here," she says. She's not especially careful when handing over the bedding, and sees the shockwave of their fingers bumping play out across his face. "I think the couch is comfortable enough."

It's abrupt and not very polite, but Nathan doesn't let it faze him. She's grateful he doesn't make her actually ask, just plants himself on her couch (sets himself between her and whatever dares come after her) and begins to take off his shoes. It's not his place, not inviolate, and yet it's wonderful and close enough that the vise around her ribs loosens enough for her to finally take in a full breath.

* * *

She dreams she's on the beach, dark hair blowing in the breeze. The Colorado Kid is dead, propped up like some ancient sacrifice. Her heart is breaking in her chest, there are unfamiliar tears on her cheeks, and she has to see his face. Just once more. She has to…has to…see if his eyes are the same, if his chin is—

It's Nathan. Nathan lying there, limp and lifeless. She brushes aside blonde hair from her eyes, hoping she's only seeing things. No. No, it's him, long legs stretched out in front of him, hands empty and still, eyes staring. For the first time, he doesn't see _her_.

She couldn't save him.

This is all her fault.

* * *

Audrey bolts upright, her heart galloping against the slats of her breastbone.

Nathan's there, lying on her couch, legs hanging off one end, the blanket half-falling off his shoulders. A reflection of the moon, peeping in through her curtains, shines from his eyes as he stares back at her.

Awake. Aware. Alive.

"Parker," he says simply.

Audrey relaxes and gives him a nod.

His calm, even breathing lulls her back to sleep.

* * *

In the morning, Audrey wakes to the smell of pancakes. For just a moment (before her bruised cheek twinges and she is reminded all over again of what happened), her lips twitch in a smile, and she feels loose, relaxed. By the time she ducks into the bathroom, dresses, and heads over to the kitchen, her mind is clamoring with fears and mysteries and discrepancies (above all, with the cold knowledge that her kidnapper, Roslyn's murderer, is still alive, still free, still dangerous), all the things she should be doing and leads she should be chasing.

But the sight of Nathan, standing over the stove with a spatula in hand, turning to greet her with a tentative smile and worry clear in the lines between his eyes…this is worth time. This (_he_) is worth effort. So Audrey _chooses_ to be here, present, with him. Everyone she needs to talk to will still be ready and willing to lie whether she sees them now or in an hour.

"Good thing I stocked up on pancake supplies as soon as we became friends," she says, slipping into a chair at the table.

"You're good on coffee, too," he says, his worry lines easing as he sets a cup in front of her. "Other than that, though, you could stand to do a bit of grocery shopping."

(She can't decide if she's relieved or disappointed that he doesn't pursue the fact that she bought food just for him when, aside from a Christmas party, she's never really invited him inside.)

Audrey raises her eyebrow at him before sipping her coffee. "Didn't I catch you eating cereal once at your desk?"

"A little variety's good for you," he deadpans.

"Pancakes and cereal?"

"They say breakfast's the most important meal of the day. Here, eat up."

Only when the plate of steaming pancakes is set in front of her, dripping with syrup, does Audrey realize just how hungry she is. She doesn't even remember the last time she ate.

"Thanks, Nathan," she says. When she realizes there's a bit too much emotion revealed in those two words, she grins and adds, "I didn't know you catered as well as chauffeured."

"About that…" Nathan sits down with his own plate of pancakes (she doesn't bother to deny just how good it feels to have him sitting across from her; to not be alone). "I might be doing a lot more than that."

She studies him, taken aback by how quickly his teasing has turned into diffidence. "What's going on?"

Nathan straightens and meets her eyes. "Dwight offered me a job. And I took it."

"A job." Audrey remembers him coming into the inn the day before, remembers the gun in his hand and the flash of gold at his hip.

"Yeah." He studies her closely, his head slightly ducked, as if he's afraid of her reaction.

But Audrey's not afraid. She's suddenly not afraid at all. Her growing smile seems to be enough to allay whatever Nathan was afraid of, and his lips curve in the beginning of an answering smile.

"Partners?" she asks him, and his smile grows.

"Partners," he promises.

It's probably too much after yesterday (but Audrey remembers before that, remembers Nathan showing her a gift threaded through his stack of articles, remembers a hug she wished would never end, remembers an address and his eyes burning into her and the feel of his stubbled cheek beneath her lips; she remembers driving away from the Haven Herald, answers ahead of her, but wanting only to go back, to find Nathan and pursue that wealth of devotion secreted in his eyes whenever he looks at her).

So Audrey acts. Just reaches out (so easy) and curls her fingers around his palm.

And he reacts. He always reacts. A tremor in his hand, a lightning burst of shock in his eyes, that instant of pleasure, and then the flutter of his eyelashes as he tries his best to memorize each sensation.

"I told you you'd make a good detective." She does her best to inject a teasing note into her hoarse voice (because Nathan's not the only one who _reacts_ at touch between them, who savors it and leans into it and tries to memorize it just in case).

"Well, it's early days yet. Dwight's got a few more hoops I have to jump through before it's completely official."

"But soon?"

His small nod confirms it. "Soon."

"Good." Audrey gives his hand a final squeeze (not planned, just her last bid to try to hold on when she knows they need to eat and move and get going).

"You're okay with this?" Nathan picks up his own fork even though he's obviously intent on her answer. "If you—"

"Nathan." She waits until he meets her eyes before smiling. "If you need an office, I have an empty desk in mine. Could be a good trade for both of us."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. You get space and I get free coffee. Just keep your strange scent thingies in a drawer, okay?"

"Deal," he says.

They're both smiling when they finally turn their attention to the pancakes growing cold between them.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Again, I haven't had a chance to sit down and rewatch this season recently, so I've been doing my best to go off memory. That said, I am really just guessing a lot with the amount of days left until the Hunter Meteor storm. The show, if I remember correctly, only mentions the days every once in a while, and I have no idea how much time passes between episodes or, for that matter, during an episode, so...please bear with me and if it seems like I'm guessing wrong, feel free to let me know why so I can change it and make us all happier!

Also, I have no idea what kind of training is necessary to become a detective in a small town, but I'm pretty sure Haven has no idea either - and come on, it's not like Dwight's taken all the courses, right? So, yet more creative license. :)

Hope you all enjoy and feel free to leave a comment - I love, love, love talking about Haven!

* * *

After Audrey clambers into the Bronco, Nathan shuts her door for her, then circles the truck and gets in himself. His door slams closed. Something deep inside Audrey eases. (Safe. They're both safe here, cocooned in metal and paint and the scent of Nathan, in a cocoon woven through countless hours of them sitting side by side sharing coffee and laughter and comfort.) Leaning her head back against the seat, Audrey takes a deep breath of pine and syrup and ink, lets her eyes fall closed.

But the engine doesn't rumble to vibrating life. They don't start to move, headed toward the station (to _their_ office). Instead, they sit, silent, still.

"Nathan?" she asks, tilting her head to look at him. His hands are draped over the steering wheel while a muscle ticks in his jaw. It's strange, unfamiliar, seeing him look so uncertain. Audrey's grown so used to (so dependent on) his certainty, his resolve, that it sends a shiver all the way to her bones, a fault line leaving cracks in her frame, to see him falter.

"I found something," he says. "Something important."

Straightening, Audrey shifts to face him. The movement jostles a folder lying on the seat between them. "What is it?"

"I…I didn't know how to tell you. I _don't_ know how to tell you. So…here. See for yourself."

He lets go of the steering wheel long enough to pick up the folder and hand it to her. For just an instant, quick and elongated all at once, Audrey doesn't want to open the pages, doesn't want to see what new revelation waits to be sprung on her. But Nathan watches her from the corner of his eye (waiting to follow her lead, to let his certainty form in the wake of her action), so Audrey flips aside the cover and stares at yet another picture of her unfamiliar, startling face.

"The day Lucy disappeared, there was a meteor storm," Nathan says quietly. Audrey's eyes skim past the picture she doesn't remember, down to another article about a storm that lit up the sky. The name of it slams into her with what seems like crushing force, as if one of the meteors has landed on her chest.

"The Hunter," she says, forces the words past the dread lining her throat.

"When Sarah vanished, too, there was the same meteor storm."

Audrey stares at the next articles, a woman with bobbed curls, dressed in an old-time nurse's uniform. At another story about an earlier iteration of that same meteor shower (and how ironic is it, how terrifying, that she identifies more with the meteors than she does those pictures of her different faces; that she looks at the picture of a constellation and feels something tugging inside her, a spark of recognition that has never bothered to appear when she glimpses Lucy?).

"When…" She has to pause to swallow. "When is the next Hunter? How often does it come?"

"I don't know." And finally (now that she can't look away from her doom, spelled out in her own handwriting, printed in black and white on the lid of a too-symbolic coffin), Nathan looks at her. "I…I came to show you, and found…"

_A mess_, she finished for him. A mess in her apartment. A mess throwing herself into his arms (as if she didn't leave before and forget another man she loved). A mess haunted by nightmares of a past erased from her mind and doomed, apparently, to disappear in a shockingly finite time.

"But we can stop this," he says, and the certainty's back, reacting to _her _reaction. She's never known anyone (that she can remember, something whispers in the back of her mind) who can be so sure, can invest so much faith, can devote so much resolve to any one thing. Every other time, at every proof of just how much he believes in her, she's been inspired, strengthened, encouraged, has borrowed his resolve for herself, armored herself in his unflagging faith. But now…now she's just so tired. So worn out. So exhausted that she almost can't bear his trust.

(She remembers another nightmare, a day that wouldn't end, a friend who believed her, a partner who took the fall for her. She remembers wood shrapnel and a figure lying in the street, nothing but trust in his eyes as she felt his heartbeat stop and his life slip through her fingers.)

"We'll stop this," Nathan repeats. "Whoever kidnapped you made a mistake because now we've found the warning you left yourself. We just have to find the Colorado Kid before the meteor storm and…and he'll be able to tell us how to keep you here."

"Find a dead man," Audrey scoffs. She feels so very empty, hollowed out and filled with only exhaustion, as if even now Audrey Parker is slipping away from her like grains of sand in an hourglass. "A man that has never been identified."

"Well, this is Haven, and Dave and Vince control all the information. No matter what the paper said, they might know who he is."

"They'll never tell us," she says, unable to help the bleak note of her voice. "They didn't even tell us about the grave until they had no other choice."

"I think they actually were surprised to find the grave empty, though. And they like you, Audrey. They'll help us keep you here."

Another battle. Another fight for just a morsel of information, another struggle to pry anything useful and worthwhile from those two old men locked tight as safes, and even then, it will, she already knows, only be another single piece in the jigsaw puzzle that is her life. And all along, the back of her neck, the base of her spine, the hair on her arms, are all tingling, prickling, driving her mad. Her kidnapper's out there, watching, plotting (killing? burning other innocent people alive?) and how selfish is she, that the mystery of her past is overriding her desire to bring Roslyn's killer to justice?

"Parker." Nathan takes the folder from her limp hands and shuts it in the glove box (out of sight, out of mind, a credo that apparently works amazingly with her since the instant she leaves Haven, she forgets everything, even the people she loves).

"Parker," he says again, so insistent she has to meet his eyes. "We're going to stop this, all right? You're not going to disappear."

"Right." She nods because what else is she supposed to do (she can still hear the tautness of his voice when she dialed his number by memory and he answered; can still feel the tremble in his body when he folded himself around her)? Disappearing won't just affect her, she realizes with a terrible sinking feeling. It will erase her, maybe, but it will hurt Nathan, too (and _he'll_ never forget).

"Parker." It's like he's stuck, trapped in this moment until she gives him what he's seeking. It's so strange seeing him needing reassurance that she can't help but give it to him with another nod.

"Nathan," she says in return, like a silent pact, unspoken between their names (her own ephemeral and shifting, his solid and enduring). "We'll figure this out."

He relaxes, just a bit, and she doesn't regret the lie.

* * *

The station calms her, another haven that hasn't been compromised. It's even better now that Nathan actually comes inside with her (now that she'll know where he is, what he's doing, instead of being left to wonder if another psycho killer, or Max Hansen, or the Rev, has taken him from her). When he slows at the threshold of her office, Audrey reaches back and grabs his sleeve, tugs him in after her. She wants him here (_needs_ him here, within reach), he belongs here—none of her havens are complete without his steadfast presence.

Or, she remembers and realizes anew when Duke sticks his head into her (their) office, without Duke's cocky grins and gentle encouragement.

"Back to work already?" he asks as if they are in the middle of a conversation.

Audrey can feel tension simmering behind her in Nathan's glowering silence, but she doesn't care. She needs Duke, needs the reminder that her kidnapper didn't ruin everything. More (selfishly), she needs his presence because he is her comrade in secrecy, stuck in the same boat as her, his past veiled in lies, unreasonable expectations lying in wait for him like hidden traps, the whole town knowing more than him about who he is but always refusing to disclose it. They are alike, her and Duke, two sides of the same coin, and it's nice, sometimes, to know she isn't the only one who doesn't know who she is.

"There were some discrepancies in the report on Roslyn's death," Audrey says, and as much as it hurts to say Roslyn's name, she can't help but smile at Duke. Nathan's like a warm blanket, comforting and enveloping, while Duke is a breath of fresh air, a cool breeze to wake her up. She needs them both (if only they could get along).

"Well, I was just headed over to change the locks to your place." Duke waggles his eyebrows. "Do you want me to pretend I don't have ways to get in myself or do you want me to just go ahead?"

"Nice," Nathan says acerbically. "That'll make her feel safe."

"Yes, Nathan," Duke says in a patronizing tone. "We're friends, we hang out, and oh yeah, I'm her landlord too."

"Guys," Audrey says. She's too drained to deal with their sniping. "Thank you, Duke," she says. "Just make sure you lock up when you're done. Nathan, we should go check in with the new chief."

"Wait." Duke looks between them. "_We_? As in…what, work buddies?" His eyes flick down to Nathan's belt where the gold badge gleams in the low station lights. "Huh. And here I thought you just stole one of those to help us find Audrey."

"Nope." Nathan steps forward, obviously intending to walk out of the office, but Duke blocks the doorway.

"And you really think this is wise? There are a lot of people in town who won't be happy to hear about this. What did Vince say?"

"I don't know. Haven't told him yet."

Duke nods, slowly. "I don't know, Nathan, this—"

"I don't need your permission!" Nathan snaps, and he shoves past Duke out into the bullpen.

As per usual, Audrey isn't sure what to make of their interaction. Every time they're together, she can feel the hidden riptides of history, surging waves ready to suck one or the other under. But she still can't tell what causes it, is no closer to understanding their dynamic now than when she first came to town.

"Audrey." Duke catches her arm when she starts after Nathan. "Did…did Nathan show you those articles he found?"

Her eyes drop away from him. Something's caught in her throat. "Yeah. Yeah, he did."

"I looked up that Hunter meteor storm." It's impossible, then, to meet Duke's eyes (though she can feel them on her, heavy and cloaking and dark). Over Duke's shoulder, she can see the station bustling with its usual busyness, paperwork and problems that have been happening long before she got here and will keep happening long after she's gone.

Seeking stability, Audrey finds Nathan standing in the doorway of the chief's office, talking to someone inside. It feels like a million years ago that she let him think they could stop her disappearing on top of all the Troubled crying for her help. (And why did she do that? When his dad was falling to pieces right before their eyes, she wasn't able to give him false hope, so why, now, with her life as Audrey Parker on the line, did she give him any reason to think that this whole thing wasn't too big for them?)

(Maybe, she thinks in some deep hidden part of herself, underneath the changing names and altered memories, maybe she let him hope because _she_ wants to hope too, hope for something more than just endlessly forgetting.)

"Audrey," Duke says, a whisper in her ear, an echo of things to come, "that meteor storm comes every twenty-seven years give or take a few months."

"And…" She can't take her eyes off Nathan. He's almost smiling as he talks to the new chief of police. "How long until the next one?"

Duke's hand is warm on her elbow. His eyes are soft and sad and determined. "Fifty-one days."

And that's it, isn't it?

All this time, all the Troubles, the Rev and the chief, Chris and Eleanor, Dave and Vince, _Duke and Nathan_, all the clues and the days of frustration, the moments of revelation…all of it will be gone in less than two months.

Audrey stares at Duke, puts her hand over the one on her elbow and _clings_ so that she won't vanish entirely right then and there, disintegrate into a gazillion pieces and drift with no anchor.

"I'm sorry." Duke reaches out with his other hand, places it on her shoulder to keep her upright. To hold her there. "I'm so sorry, Audrey. We'll…we'll look for a way out of this. I'll do everything I can—I have some pull with Dave and Vince, even, so who knows? And you know Nathan won't stop until you're safe. You have a lot of friends here, Audrey, a lot of allies, and I would never bet on some meteor shower over you."

"Yeah." She thinks she tries a smile (she can't feel it, doesn't know it if was successful but imagines it wasn't). "Look, Duke, I have to go. I'm supposed to be meeting the new chief, and…and I really do need to find Roslyn's murderer."

"Tell Nathan soon, okay?" Duke's sympathy melts, just a fraction, into sternness. "He's going to get around to looking it up himself soon—it'll be better coming from you."

"Aww." Another attempted smile, another moment of distant apathy. "You really do care."

"Or maybe I just don't want to be around to take the fall if you disappear one day and Nathan doesn't know why."

She stiffens, hurt and insulted and needing above all to lash out. "Well, I'm sorry my absence will inconvenience you."

"No." Duke catches her hand and doesn't let go (unlike Nathan, he always knows to hold on; he is like her, both of them clinging to what they can claim lest it disappear—which she will, of course, so no wonder he holds so tightly). "That's not what I meant, Audrey, and you know it."

After a moment of stiffness, Audrey lets him pull her into a hug. She needs this, needs his smuggler hands to hold her together, the scent of sea and salt and metal to keep her head above the swelling apathy.

"We're going to figure this out," he promises (so many promises out there; so few able to be fulfilled).

"Yeah." She nods against his shoulder, takes a deep breath, and steps away.

Nathan is standing there, something shaken in his expression, though no sooner does she see it than his face goes shuttered, aloof and impenetrable. The face he wears around all those who treat him as if he's invisible.

"Dwight wants to see you," he says, then without even a glare Duke's way, Nathan retreats. His shoulders are stooped, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He moves through the station like a ghost, touching no one.

"Tell him soon," Duke warns, then he's gone too.

(Audrey doesn't blame them for leaving, not when doing so saves them from having to watch _her_ disappear.)

* * *

Dwight is huge and quiet and tentative when he talks to her (no craggy bluffs or raging surf like with Garland; just an old tree with deep roots buried in stone, hanging grimly on as the edge of the cliff erodes further every day). Tentative, even diplomatic, completely unlike the vicious giant she saw fighting with Duke before being flung into the ocean. He is gentle with her, polite—until he mentions the shrink he wants her to see.

"I'm fine," she says with a wave of her hand. "Really. I don't need a—"

"You just went through a very traumatic experience," he says, looking up from the papers he grabbed once he'd given her the news, as if he didn't expect her to object. "And whether you're hiding the effects or just haven't felt them—_yet_—the law says you have to get a full psych eval."

"Really?" Audrey raises her eyebrows, unimpressed. Her kidnapper is still out there, Roslyn hasn't even been buried yet, and she has only fifty-one days left to help all the Troubled in Haven. Time is ticking. (And Nathan is waiting, or maybe hiding, or retreating; it could be any of the three, and he needs her to go after him, to _see _him.) "In Haven? What am I supposed to tell this shrink exactly? The Troubles aren't—"

"Claire knows." Dwight regards her with a set look in his eyes. "In fact, most of her patients are the Troubled you've helped. Look, Audrey, I respect you—I even admire you. You do a lot of good for this town. But I respect Claire too, for the same reasons, and I really think she can help you. She's a good woman. She could even be a good friend."

A strong surge of denial swells up inside her. Audrey doesn't make friends easily (not real ones, friends who will come pick her up for work every day with a cup of coffee in hand; who flirt with her and smirk at her and are just _there_ when she needs him), but she already has two.

Two friends. Two people who will be hurt when she disappears.

Only fifty-one days left, and Audrey doesn't need or want another person to add to the list of mourners at her figurative funeral.

"Fine," she says ungraciously. "I'll talk to her."

"Great." Dwight gives her a perfunctory smile. "I'll send her your way. Oh, and about Nathan…"

Audrey swings back around, her hand on the doorframe.

"He'll need time to train and get licenses for our firearms, sign some forms for payroll and insurance, things like that. But he's your partner. You know that, right?"

"I know. He told me."

"Good." Dwight nods decisively. "You make a good team. Show him the ropes, but if you need help in the meantime, let me know."

If she needs help, she thinks, she'll surely call Duke to her side before she ever even thinks of Dwight. Still, she wants to get out of there, so she nods and smiles and says, "Okay."

"I sent Nathan ahead to the coroner's. You can meet him there."

She would, but before she can even leave her office with her coat in hand, she's ambushed by a red-haired woman too eager, too smiley, too _willing_ for Audrey's current mood.

"Claire Callahan," she introduces herself with both a business card and a handshake. "Chief Hendrickson said we could talk."

"Well, he did," Audrey says slowly as she pulls her coat on, "but I'm supposed to be meeting my partner right now."

(Her _partner_. It feels good, _safe_, saying that and thinking of Nathan. The memory of his shuttered face just a few moments ago doesn't feel nearly as good.)

"All right," Claire says easily. "How about later this afternoon then?"

Audrey stares at this woman, young and open and harboring a ready smile, all sunshine and friendliness. It hardly seems possible that she even knows about the Troubled, let alone that she treats them, helps them, gives them some form of closure even Audrey can't. (But then, Audrey won't be here very long, will she, so maybe it's better to let her own storm clouds of uncertainty and terror pass by and leave the Troubled in the hands of sunlight and hope until the next time the storm comes.)

"Audrey?" Claire says questioningly, interest sharp on her face, and Audrey blinks.

"Yeah, we'll…we'll see."

Then she flees, and intentionally _doesn't_ listen to whatever Claire says to her back.

* * *

Working with Nathan as her partner is surprisingly not surprising at all. He walks a step behind her. He fills her in on the names and backgrounds of the people and places they encounter. He steps in front of her whenever there is danger nearby. He gives her his coat and his presence and his assurance, and it is the same as it has always been, since her very first day in Haven, when he was the first person she met, pulling her out of a teetering car and offering her a ride, bringing her straight to the place she needed to be.

He's always been her partner, she thinks, badge or no badge. She wishes the gun he wore on his hip (illegally, probably, if he hasn't even been licensed yet) would help her feel like he's safer now, but instead, it just makes her more worried. He's already so willing to throw himself ahead of her, to use himself as her human shield, to scout ahead and take all the heat on himself. Carrying a weapon and a badge and the tattoo on his arm…it feels like he's armoring himself in preparation of war. Like he's ready to lay his life down for her.

And she can't let him. He deserves better, is worth more (especially when she will only be here for a couple more months, when his life-blood will buy her only a few more weeks).

Audrey is so busy worrying about Nathan, about her kidnapper, about the naked wildmen showing up all over town, that she almost doesn't even care when Claire invites herself along on the investigation. The psychiatrist is much more persistent than Audrey gave her credit for, and so much more talkative than Nathan or even Duke, but she at least seems content to hang back and let Audrey talk to the Troubled (even Troubled who turn out to be family pets, transformed into creatures they don't understand and aren't prepared to be). It's nice to have a companion who doesn't seem likely to get herself killed on Audrey's behalf.

Or maybe, more pressingly, it's just that Claire provides a buffer between Audrey and Nathan. Audrey who has a secret weighing every word she says (forty-nine days until she's gone forever and another woman with her face takes her place) and Nathan who is capable and competent but still has that wall up behind his eyes (a partner and an ally, but not really a friend, as if their morning over pancakes never happened).

"I think there are other relationships that might need addressing," Claire says as boldly as ever, when Nathan (safe, still, and alive, at least for now) kneels on the ground and strokes a dog (once more in its own form, back to the things it understands) he cannot feel.

A surge of denial swells up, hot and overwhelming, inside of Audrey. Nathan is private, secret, reserved. He's not something for Claire to analyze and consider and judge. Audrey refuses to let him be made any more of a spectacle than his outcast persona and the articles he wrote in her defense and the new badge at his belt have already made him.

Besides, he's not hers. Not really. Not anymore than Cookie is. The dog who was willing to help in any form, who deserves a good home and people who love him. The man who's willing to help at all costs and deserves everything.

Audrey looks at Claire and thinks that it won't be so bad to have someone to talk to, someone to listen to her fears without feeling like she has to reassure her they can change fate and rewrite the future. But Nathan is separate from all that. Self-contained and set apart.

"There's nothing to talk about," she says coldly. "We're partners. I trust him. But that's all."

And only after she says it (only after she sees the check to Nathan's hand on Cookie, the line of tension in his shoulders) does Audrey remember just how good Nathan's hearing is.

* * *

Nightmares come for her in the dark. She dreams that her kidnapper still has her, her hands are tied behind her back while blood trickles down her wrists and stars explode in her vision. Out of sight, Roslyn screams and screams, crying for help Audrey is powerless to give.

And then it's not Roslyn being hurt, burned beyond recognition, scorched from the inside out by fury and vengeance that should be aimed at Audrey. It's Nathan there, instead, but she's not sure how she knows because he makes no sound at all, utterly silent as he is turned to ashes from the inside out, all that's left to mark his grave a bit of flesh marked by a tattoo neither one of them understands.

She thrashes and shouts and strains, but it's useless. She cannot save him. She doesn't save him.

Because she forgets him.

Audrey wakes with a start. She doesn't try to sleep again.

* * *

The sky's only beginning to lighten at the edges when Duke shows up with coffee (liberally sprinkled with alcohol, and it's not her usual mix but it's closer than the sugary ones he used to give her).

"It's early," she says as she wraps her cold hands around the cup.

"So it is." Duke peers at her. "But you're up, and we both know you're not a morning person."

She looks away, sips at the coffee that burns at the back of her throat (or is that the tears she keeps swallowing back?).

Duke doesn't make her talk. Instead, he pulls her outside and wraps her in a blanket and settles her in a chair to stare out at the watery horizon. He sits next to her and talks about the strange (the _normal_ strange) patrons that come into his bar while the sun melts into the sky and transfigures darkness into fleeing shadows.

Her heart is tight and small (crammed to overflowing with all the people she's loved and must still love, somehow, even though she can't remember their names or faces), but warmed through under the sharp, overwhelming surge of affection she feels for the rogue, there at her side just because he knows she needs him.

"Thanks, Duke," she manages, too little, too weak, but his eyes are soft, his expression unguarded, and she knows he understands (so alike, both of them, so easily able to find common ground).

The stillness of the morning is shattered by the sound of heavy steps coming her way (and this time Duke's here, as if he doesn't realize that she can't save anyone anymore). Audrey goes for her gun, her finger actually on the trigger—and a shudder runs through her when Nathan comes into view, startling back at the sight of Audrey (and Duke, she notices, with some blunt instrument held half-hidden behind his leg) bristling in front of him.

(But then, she's never known Nathan to flinch away from any threat, any weapon, so maybe it is simply the sight of her and Duke together, the blanket fallen from her shoulders and the empty cups left behind like a smoking gun, that he shies away from.)

There's a biting comment on Nathan's tongue (his eyes have turned flinty, as they always do when he goes on the attack), but his attention seems caught by Audrey's unconscious gesture to fiddle with the bandages wrapped around her wrists. Closing his mouth over whatever he meant to say, Nathan takes a breath.

"Ready for work, Parker?" he asks shortly.

"Punctual as always, huh, Nate?" Duke interjects. "How's the chauffeuring business working out for you now that you've left the paper?"

Audrey doesn't miss the way Nathan touches the badge on his belt, as if checking that it's still real.

"Thanks for the coffee, Duke," she says before this can degenerate further. "Lock up when you're done, huh?"

"Sure thing."

Nathan's already turned to go, silent and ghostlike, and Audrey wishes she'd had the chance to catch up to him earlier, to fix whatever misconception he has in his head (but then, she wishes a lot of things and so few of them will come true).

There are coffee cups waiting in the Bronco, though Nathan doesn't mention them (he _did_ see the mugs up on the deck; he's observant enough to be an amazing detective…and a disappointed friend). Audrey doesn't need the extra caffeine, already jumpy enough, but she takes a sip anyway.

"Perfect temperature," she says.

"Parker," Nathan says abruptly, as if coming to a sudden decision. "You know what you're doing, right?"

The question stings (hammering in how different she is now from before her kidnapping, left drowning in an ocean of uncertainty, every piece of solid ground she finds crumbling beneath her).

"Look," she says, "whatever history there is between you and Duke—"

"I'm more concerned about Crocker history right now," he says. "I know you couldn't hear what Simon Crocker said during that ghost Trouble, but if you had heard it, you'd—"

"Duke's not his father, Nathan. He's learning all this for the first time, just like us, and he's never let us down before."

"Speak for yourself. And anyway, his Trouble might be more than he can handle—"

"We can handle Troubles." Audrey fiddles with her bandages. "It's everything else that I worry about."

Nathan's eyes flick from the road to her wrists, and his jaw tightens. "The Troubles affect us all differently," he begins, but Audrey can't let him finish. There are only two constants in her life, two people keeping her from completely drowning, and she's tired of them both attacking each other.

"Seriously, Nathan, Duke's saved my life too many times for me to believe he'd ever turn against us. We can trust him, okay? He's on our side."

His hands tightening on the steering wheel, Nathan takes a deep breath. "Maybe he's on your side for now, Parker, but that will change as soon as—"

"_My _side?" She stares at him. "What? You and I aren't on the same side anymore?"

"Not where Duke's concerned. I'm your partner, Parker, right? Your _ally_? Well, that means I watch your back for you, look for the things you don't see."

"I don't _need_ a partner like that!" she snaps. "I need a partner who trusts me."

"I do trust you. It's Duke I don't trust."

"Well, I trust Duke, so if you—"

"And do you trust me?" he counters with frost cutting his syllables sharp. "Because you want me to trust Duke wholeheartedly just because you do, but I _don't _trust him and that doesn't seem to matter to you at all. So…I guess that means the only question left is if you trust _me_ at all."

They pull into the station at the worst moment, allowing Nathan to turn and face her head-on.

"Once, you said I was the only one you absolutely trusted. Has that changed?"

His gaze is like a weight, the pressure of water gushing at her, surf pounding against her until she hardly knows up from down.

(Forty-eight days, she thinks, a secret held between them like a wall built to protect, but instead it's only destroying.)

"I do trust you, Nathan," she says, resisting the urge to reach out and take his hand (she can't make her point by overturning his equilibrium). "But I think you might be too close to this to judge effectively."

"Right. But Duke's objective."

"Nathan," she starts, but he turns away from her, releasing her from the intensity of his stare (only it doesn't feel like a reprieve; feels like a loss instead).

"I have to go. Stan's meeting me at the shooting range, and he has to be back at the station in time to show his nephew around."

He doesn't shut the engine off so they can talk for a few minutes. Doesn't get out and circle the Bronco to open her door for her. Doesn't remind her that her coffee's probably getting cold. Just stares straight ahead through the windshield and waits for her to leave him. He's shutting her out more effectively than the wall of her secret, and she can't let this happen (she can't lose him like this). She has to tell him, has to remind him that he _is_ her confidant, that he's always been the first one she turns to.

"Nathan, there's something that I have to tell you. Duke and I—"

"Please." There's something very raw, very desperate, in his voice. "Please, Audrey, not now, okay? Just…I'll see you later."

She's never heard him beg before.

(She hopes she never does again.)

"Okay," she says. "I'll see you later then. Partner?"

(It's the only connection between them that she fully trusts right now.)

"Friend. Partner. Ally." Nathan's voice is tight and he refuses to meet her eyes. "Don't worry, Parker. I get it."

For some reason, she doesn't think he does. She feels like something has gone terribly wrong between them (but maybe it's for the best if she's just going to vanish from his life as if she's never been a part of it at all).

Audrey stands alone on the steps leading into the station, and watches the Bronco recede into the distance (out of sight, but definitely not out of mind).


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Season 3 is full of angst, no question, but this chapter turned out to be one of my favorites! Again, please forgive the leeway I'm taking with the timeline concerning the meteor storm's expected arrival date, and I hope you enjoy!

Also, another reminder that the plot of the show and the episodes that I borrow from so heavily are not mine and were written by others. No copyright infringement is intended!

* * *

"Claire says you still aren't making time to see her," Dwight says as greeting. "I understand if it's not your favorite thing, but you do need to make it a priority."

"I—" she starts, but Dwight cuts her off with a raise of his hand.

"But not this minute. A body was just found in the woods missing an organ. Be careful on this one, Audrey, all right? I've been getting reports of a stranger in town poking around asking questions. I don't think I need to tell you that outside attention is the last thing Haven needs. This could all go sideways fast."

Audrey shoves aside thought of the other (_real_) Audrey Parker who came to town asking questions. "Got it," she says.

"And if you need help, call Nathan back from training," Dwight says. "The Troubles are our number one priority."

* * *

Later, standing alone in the woods staring down at the body of a monster, Audrey thinks that things aren't just sideways anymore. They're inverted and upside down and inside out. And unfortunately, she can't blame it all on the Troubled man at her feet.

In fact, she thinks she can trace it all back to the moment she opened her door and ended up convulsing with Taser shocks. The instant she woke to questions that destroyed the (admittedly fragile) foundations of her world. The hour she failed to save Roslyn, then failed to save Wesley, then nearly failed to save the Magnusson kid (_would_ have failed if not for Cookie's help), and has failed every day since to be as strong as Haven and Nathan and Duke need her to be (fails, every day, to tell Nathan the truth about how little time is left to them).

In some way, maybe she confused this Troubled man with her kidnapper, both of them hunting down specific people, hurting them, leaving them weaker and affected in their wake (and she is weak now, tired and aching and ineffectual). She narrowed her focus to catching this killer because it felt like doing so would bring back all the things that made her _her_, and somewhere along the way, she lost sight of the consequences.

(Or maybe she knew the consequences all along. Easier to vanish when no one wants her here anymore, when they are happy to see the last of her, when she has destroyed every reason she would want to stay.)

And now, just like she wanted, Harry Nix is dead. He's dead and there are texts on her phone telling her about the victims all beginning to recover, and she got everything she wanted.

And still she is numb.

Hollow.

Alone.

Duke walks away from her with a look on his face she will see in her nightmares (at least until she is wiped away to become someone else—hopefully someone stronger). She could call Nathan now, let him help with the Boston cop who saw more than he should, let him help with this horrific case (let him be there so that when she falters, she can borrow some of his endless strength), but she doesn't. She can't.

Better for him to stay far away from this one. Better not to strain his conscience with this impossible choice. (Better, above all, _not_ to see him look at her the same way Duke did, so full of shock and disappointment and reproach.)

* * *

She sees that look on Nathan's face anyway, an expression she'll never be able to forget, never wipe away (she's afraid that even when he's gracing her with that tiny smile just for her, she'll still see this expression overlaid atop it), and it's Duke who puts it there.

Not that she blames him. Duke was merely her tool, not the murderer, but the fact that she allowed herself to see her friend as something to be used (to turn a person into a murder weapon, as if she is a Trouble herself, infecting an innocent to hurt others against their will) is bad enough. So Audrey lets Duke tag along on the newest case, lets him investigate all these strange deaths caused by invisible sharks and swarming insects and shallow cuts. She feels herself turned frantic and panicky when Duke starts drowning (she's terrified, above all, that he will die right in front of her before she can make up for what she made him do), and shaky with relief when he survives. She doesn't stop him from going over the cliffside to save the poor woman trapped in the wreckage of her car, and isn't surprised at all when he saves Daphne (because despite his rough exterior, Audrey knows that's who Duke is, a man who takes a tool employed for death and uses it instead on his own terms—to save lives).

It's not exactly rocket science to interpret what Duke is trying to accomplish by gluing himself to her side. She hears his message loud and clear.

He is his own person, and maybe they are still friends, but not if she looks at him the same way the rest of the town does. Not if she sees only his Trouble instead of his hidden heart of gold.

Nathan, though, doesn't understand the message.

And Audrey knows (in those moments when she's not distracted by the stark reproach Duke sends her way through pointed glares and uncharacteristic silence), she _knows_ that she's not being a good partner.

She told Nathan she _wanted_ him by her side, that she trusted him above all, that she would rely on him. And then, not even a week later, she foists him off on the new guy to look into a prison van that was ambushed, doesn't let Nathan argue when she invites Duke along, chooses _Duke_ as her escort (as her _partner_; she knows that's how it looks, what he sees), and allows Duke to do what Nathan meant to do by climbing down to the half-submerged car, leaving Nathan only the task of catching her when she sways under the weight of memories she isn't brave enough to tell him about.

From the outside, it looks terrible. And it's a poor reward for Nathan's unusual self-assertion and his reach toward making a real place for himself here.

But every time she looks at Nathan, Audrey feels the truth of her impending disappearance (the truth that has somehow because a damning secret, forty-four days and shrinking every moment) clogging her throat and numbing her heart. And she owes Duke, owes him more than she can probably ever repay (certainly not in the little time she has left).

So she keeps quiet while Nathan's eyes shutter and turn hard, impenetrable. She doesn't say a word while his tentative smiles and wry comments become only quiet (mute) tension.

(She promised herself she would never do to him what Haven does to him every day, and she hasn't disappeared fast enough to stop herself from becoming a liar.)

In the end, nothing she did to keep Nathan out of this ugly business matters, because in a heated moment, standing in a hospital hallway, Duke names her sins aloud (her sins, but not her secret, and surely it's wrong that she is more relieved at that than horrified that Nathan now knows she is a murderer-by-proxy).

For the first time, something Duke says doesn't make Nathan close off from him. Instead, it makes Nathan go still and turn (shoulder to shoulder with Duke, her two allies, the two men she has wronged so badly, side by side for possibly the first time) to stare at her. Silent. Aghast. That expression of disbelief and horror…and revulsion.

It hurts. A shard of glass in her heart, a stinging pain deep in the core of her, under the layered memories (and even with Nathan's Trouble as her own, she would not be immune to this pain; in fact, she thinks she might feel it even more deeply, more intense, isolated from all tactile sensations she could have used to dull the sting).

"Parker," Nathan says, disbelievingly, and Audrey breaks.

"Look," she snaps, "I'm sorry I didn't have any other options and that I didn't have time to ease you into it, Duke—and I'm sorry I don't have the luxury of your high-minded morals, Nathan, but I did what I had to do and saved a lot of lives. Maybe it's time to stop being so squeamish and _actually_ help Haven instead of just pretend that anything we're doing will last."

It's always easier to be angry than to be hurt.

It's always easier to walk away herself than to watch everyone else walk away from her in turn.

* * *

Though she didn't let herself admit what she was really afraid of, her overwhelming relief when Nathan walks into their office the next morning and sits at his desk lets her know what kept her tossing and turning all night. He doesn't have a coffee for her, but still, he's here (he didn't walk away) and that's more than she expected.

"Nathan," she says, but falls silent when his eyes (burning with an emotion she can't bring herself to recognize) slam into her.

"Dwight gave us a case," he says. "A peeping tom who had his eyes scooped out with a spoon."

Chastened, Audrey lets him add to the wall she's built between them (a wall founded on a single secret). "Okay."

Nathan drives her to Dooley's creepy apartment filled with things she'd rather not examine too closely, talks to her in the cop's shorthand that comes so naturally to him, even cracks a smile when she makes a joke, and for just a minute, Audrey thinks she can still fix this (there's time enough to ensure she doesn't leave him broken and empty), and then Duke's there, a part of this case as both witness and target.

After she's invited Duke to stay the night with her, after Duke has gone with a parting shot about how he sleeps naked, Audrey tries to reach across that wall.

"Nathan," she says, but Nathan just shakes his head.

"You know, why don't you take care of this? I'll help Tommy on the other case."

_The other case_. That's one way of referring to the growing body count left by her kidnapper. Or rather, by the serial killer they've dubbed the Bolt Gun Killer, who seems to be stealing parts from all his victims (which, even for Haven, is pretty crazy).

The case that Audrey _should_ be working on, the investigation she should be leading. But she can't. She only has a few months left and there are so many Troubled people still left to help, so many Troubles she hasn't been able to figure out yet. That's the reason she's here, doing the only thing she's good at (or _used_ to be good at, anyway, before she was kidnapped and everything started going wrong).

"Okay," she says, their conversation from that morning playing out as similarly as her multiple (stolen) lives.

Nathan's the one who walks away this time, and Audrey was right: watching someone leave is so much more painful.

* * *

"I don't think love is something that can be erased," she tells Duke, and knows Claire would be proud of her for finally getting to the heart of the matter.

Lucy and Sarah and who knows how many others (and, before she forgets, _Audrey_), all of them living and _loving_. And then, ultimately, losing. All that love building and building with nowhere left to go, no memories to define or direct it, no recipients still living to accept it.

The Colorado Kid, assumed dead, left for dead, _not_ dead, but Audrey didn't know (didn't remember) that she was supposed to be looking for him, trying to help him, saving him. She's stared at the picture with his body countless times and never even focused on him, didn't recognize that the image of his corpse (his maybe corpse?) should have affected her, influenced her,_ impacted_ her.

And that means that in nearly thirty years, when she enters Haven with different hair and name and personality…she'll look right at Duke and not know him. Will meet Nathan and not understand just how much he means and how _important_ he is. She'll look right in their eyes and think only on how weird they're acting around her, on how strange the emotion in their eyes is for a stranger. She'll feel all this love and affection, but she won't know the reason for it and so it will all be wasted.

Love doesn't die. It just endures and continues, multiplies and expands…but for no reason. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do with it. No one to change for reason of it.

Somehow, Audrey doesn't think she's ever heard anything more tragic.

* * *

"So you and Nathan," Claire says, as unafraid to broach a topic as ever. "How's that going?"

"I thought we were here to keep working on bringing back Lucy's memories."

Claire smiles at her. "Well, that's one reason. You know," she leans forward, Lucy Ripley's necklace dangling from her fingers, "I think that might be your problem."

"You?" Audrey says, a halfhearted effort to tease (a focused attempt to change the subject).

"No. Being too single-minded. Just because you want to find the Colorado Kid doesn't mean that we can't address other issues, too. And just because you're supposed to disappear in a couple months doesn't mean you have to ignore the relationships that are most important."

"I don't have time!" Audrey snaps. "It's _thirty-three_ days, Claire, and that's not enough time to help the Troubled and stop the Bolt Gun Killer and find the Colorado Kid and…and…"

Claire raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. "And?"

And Audrey can't meet her eyes anymore, has to look away as she squirms in her seat. But the truth slips out anyway (as it always does, one way or another).

"And it's better for everyone if we make a clean break."

"For everyone?" Claire pauses until Audrey looks up at her (and feels the trap spring shut around her). "Or for Nathan?"

Shaking her head, Audrey tries to ignore the chills running down her spine (the memory of Nathan's eyes, so aloof when she first came to Haven, so wondering as they became friends, so warm when he gave her Lucy Ripley's address, so bewildered when she began shutting him out…so resigned lately, as if he knows he should have expected this all along).

"Do you really think Nathan's going to just move on without a hitch when you disappear, no matter how much you ignore him? More importantly, do you think you can live with yourself without getting some kind of closure?"

"Well, I don't have to live with myself for much longer, so yeah, I think it'll be fine."

Claire snorts. "Right. Because twenty-seven years isn't a long time at all. And you've been sleeping so well lately anyway."

"Can we just…" Audrey sends a pointed look to the necklace, and breathes a sigh of relief when Claire finally shrugs.

"Okay. You can lead a horse to water…"

"Don't call me a horse," Audrey says before trying to clear her mind of anything but the necklace with Lucy Ripley's initials (of Nathan and what will be left for him in this town when she's gone).

"Remember," Claire says as the necklace swings back and forth. "Remember."

_Remember_.

Audrey can do nothing but (at least until she vanishes). She remembers Nathan offering her a ride and giving her information and stepping in front of her whenever danger approaches and taking that first bullet for her even before she knew he couldn't feel pain. She remembers a madman who killed and Nathan making himself a target, remembers pancake breakfasts and quiet days in her office and terror and relief so strong they overwhelmed her. She remembers a day that would never end and Nathan as her constant through it all; she remembers what she felt when his eyes turned blank and _void_ and the way she couldn't move at all, suffused with emotion so strong it paralyzed her, when he was alive again the next cycle. She remembers articles making her real and an address given selflessly and the feel of his warmth and height and awed devotion surrounding her.

She remembers him.

But she can't remember the Colorado Kid (because if she does, if she remembers another man's blue eyes and lean jaw and firm build, another man's smiles and touch and embrace, then what does that mean for her next life? What if Nathan is the one left behind as a body in a picture to keep her next iteration here in town, the figure that she glances right over and takes for granted?)

She can't remember.

(She doesn't want to remember.)

And so, of course, she fails all over again.

* * *

Her head is still spinning with the afterimage of that necklace swinging from Claire's fingers (nestled in her own hands, backlit by the ocean and her blue sweater) when Tommy catches her just before she leaves the station.

Things have been so hectic lately—and so many different things have been demanding her fractured attention—that Audrey hasn't really had a chance to get to know Tommy too well. If pressed, she'd admit she didn't really like him when she first met him, but since he's decided to stay (since Nathan made an off-hand comment about Haven always adopting the out-of-town cops who come snooping), she's softened toward him. He's settled in surprisingly well, taking the Troubles seemingly in stride, usually choosing to smile rather than scoff at the weirdest Haven has to offer. Most importantly of all, he's accepted Nathan without question, and Audrey has even caught Nathan smirking at a few of Tommy's quips.

"Hey, Audrey." Tommy gestures her over to his desk, pushed up in an out of the way corner since the offices are all taken. "Got a minute?"

"What is it?" she asks. Though she does her best to focus past the necklace (the beach), a hint of impatience colors her tone.

"We finally got back that video from the ATM where the scalped woman was found. Now, I don't pretend to know what's going on between you and Nathan—and I don't want to know—but he seemed to be awfully interested in the fact that the killer had a tattoo on his arm."

Her stomach flipping, urgency singing through her veins, Audrey's eyes swing to Tommy. All thoughts of the necklace and the beach and the Colorado Kid vanish. "What? What kind of tattoo?"

"Yeah." Tommy chuckles. "That's exactly the expression Nathan had."

"Tommy, was it a circular maze with a figure at each compass point?"

"Sure was. Must mean something to you guys out here, huh? Is it a gang symbol or something?"

"It definitely means something, and it's not a gang so much as a group who all seem to be Troubled."

"Uh-huh, sounds like a gang to me. And what does this _group_ of yours do?"

Audrey scoffs, a breath tainted with bitterness. "Opinions vary."

"Well…good, though, right? This means we have a solid lead on our killer."

"Hey, where is Nathan now?"

"I don't know. He said he had a lead to follow and ran out like a—"

Audrey pushes past him, running for the exit.

"Kind of like that," she hears Tommy laugh behind her, then he falls away into the distance.

Walking away first was supposed to protect Nathan. Pushing him away was supposed to keep him safe. Not telling him about her expiration date was supposed to make this easier.

It didn't work. None of it has. Nathan's not safe, he's not out of harm's reach, and this is harder than any of her cases have ever been.

"Dwight!" Audrey exclaims as she almost runs into him coming up the steps of the station.

He raises his eyebrows and steadies her. "What's got you in such a hurry?"

"Do you know where Nathan is?"

"He's your partner. Don't _you_ know where he is?"

"The ATM video showed the Bolt Gun Killer with a…_very_ distinctive tattoo."

Dwight goes still, his eyes troubled, his mouth set in a grim line.

"Dwight?"

"That's just what we need. The Guard." Dwight sighs and leans back against the stone railing on the landing, making no move to enter the station. "Audrey, this town is a powder keg just waiting for a spark to set it in flames—you know that, right?"

Tentatively, Audrey moves to his side, matches his pose, breathes carefully (does nothing to jar him and stop him from loosing whatever secrets hide behind his neat haircut and brooding exterior. "I know," she says. "The tension's been growing ever since I got to town."

"It's been growing since we first realized the Troubles were back," Dwight corrects. "And they weren't too easy before then either. When people started realizing that Nathan couldn't feel anything anymore, when the weather started changing…lines were drawn awfully fast. Havenites hold a lot of grudges. We pretend to forget them when the Troubles are gone, but as soon as they're back, we dust them off and put them front and center again."

"The Guard…" Audrey prompts quietly.

"The Guard." Some quick flash of something ghosts over Dwight's face (something like pain, something like betrayal, something like yearning) before he blinks it away. "The Guard's been around a long time, maybe as long as the Troubles. They say they want to help the Troubled."

"Really?" Audrey pauses before shrugging and saying, "Then why haven't Nathan and I run into them before on any of our cases? I mean, some victims, yes, but we've never bumped into anyone alive and there to help the Troubled people we're helping."

"They like to stay in the background. And…" Dwight lets out another heavy sigh, like dust being shaken off his own old grudge he's done his best to bury. "And they have other motives they don't necessarily admit to. If this Bolt Gun Killer really is one of them…it's going to get bad. The Rev may be gone, but his followers are still there waiting for an excuse to come out of the shadows. One of the Guard members turning into a serial killer is more than excuse enough."

"Nathan saw the video. Tommy said he had a lead and left."

Dwight's suddenly on edge, upright and bristling and so tall that Audrey actually takes a step back. "Nathan can't go after the Guard, Audrey. All right? He may have the tattoo, but he doesn't know what it means. And even if he knew…it wouldn't matter. The Guard will never accept him."

"Why not? He's done more to help the Troubled than anyone."

"Doesn't matter. Like I said, old grudges never really die." Dwight's eyes, narrow and hard, fix on Audrey. "You need to find him and stop him before he tries to confront them. Have you tried calling him?"

Calling him. So simple. So uncomplicated. So obvious.

But Audrey hasn't called him for days (weeks?) and it never even occurred to her. (She wonders if he'll even pick up.)

"You call him," Dwight orders, "and I'll get Laverne trying to reach him too. Do _not_ let him go after the Guard."

"Got it."

Audrey doesn't watch Dwight go, already pulling out her phone and pressing 1 (all this time and still she hasn't moved him on her speed dial) and waiting breathlessly for the ringing to stop.

"Parker," Nathan says into the phone, and Audrey slumps against the steps.

"Nathan, where are you?" she demands.

"I'm at the Herald with Dave, why?" His voice sharpens. "You need something? Are you in trouble?"

"No, no, I'm fine. Just…Tommy told me about the tattoo."

"Oh." There's something very flat in his voice (which is saying something considering the monotone language he speaks so fluently). "Don't worry, I'm sure Duke can take care of himself. Besides, if the Bolt Gun Killer was going to go after him, you'd think he'd have done it before now."

"No, that's…" Audrey blinks, taken aback at how quickly he leaped to that conclusion (at how it's only now just occurring to her that this revelation puts Duke's life in danger). "I wanted to make sure you weren't going after the Guard on your own."

There's a pause, a silence that lingers until Audrey actually pulls her phone back to check that the call is still open.

"I don't even know where the Guard are," Nathan finally says. "That's actually why I'm talking to Dave. Figured he or Vince could give me a place to start looking."

"Oh. That's…that's smart."

"And," he adds, a bit more confidently, "if the Guard has been around as long as it seems they have, they might know something about you disappearing. About the Hunter. Maybe even about the Colorado Kid. We still need to find him, Parker."

"Yeah." She pauses to swallow, but her throat's too dry and she chokes instead. "Yeah, maybe. But, Nathan, please don't do anything without me, all right?"

Another pause, then he says, "Okay. I'll come to your place after I'm done here."

"Great. See you then. And, Nathan?" Audrey catches her breath, feels it scrape against her throat. "Be careful."

"Sure, Parker."

She hangs up only after he does. The silence is too loud. The absence at her side is glaring. The town seems suddenly too big, riddled with secrets and dangers. (And she's been failing far too much lately to feel very confident about her future chances.)

Everything she's done has been for nothing. Nathan isn't safe at all (and she has so little time left).

* * *

Nathan's already waiting for her by the time she finishes letting Dwight know what's going on (and grilling him for answers he won't give) and makes it back to her place. Propped up against the railing outside her door, his arms folded over his chest, his eyes fixed on her as soon as she comes up the steps…the sight of him is enough to make her reach out and catch at the railing for support.

"So I'm here," he says, the sound of the ocean below a perfect harmony to his familiar voice. "Not out there doing my job. Not running ahead without checking in with you. Which," he adds pointedly, "is more than you do for me. So mind telling me why I can't head down to the _Gun & Rose_ to look for Jordan McKee, a woman Dave tells me is some kind of leader in the Guard? Which, by the way, I only _knew_ were called the Guard because you mentioned it when you called, though you never mentioned it before."

"Nathan, Dwight knows a lot more about these people than we do. He says they have their own agenda and they're dangerous—"

"Of course they are!" Nathan snaps, his hands fisted tightly against his crossed arms. "This is Haven. _Everything_ is dangerous."

"He says you can't go after them!" she says over him. "They have some grudge against you, some reason they don't trust you."

"A grudge," Nathan repeats. He's suddenly limp, deflated (though his stance doesn't change at all). He's staring straight at her but doesn't see her.

Audrey knows exactly what he's seeing, what moment is haunting him, making him hesitate at the slightest hint of accusation. She can see it too, as if they're both still standing in that field with the Rev and the Chief placed on opposite ends, them side by side in the middle.

_Your son is the reason the Troubles are still here_, the Rev had said.

It's as unbelievable now as when the Rev actually said it. The accusation itself was an underhanded ploy designed to turn them all against Nathan (a ploy that, among other things, made it so incredibly easy to pull the trigger on the Rev). Audrey doesn't believe it anymore now than she did before.

But maybe the Guard believe it.

And maybe Nathan (so conditioned to believe the worst of himself by a lifetime in this town that's been anything but a haven to him) is afraid enough of the possibility to keep away from any tattooed people.

"Please, Nathan," she says. "Let's just…be a little cautious until we can learn more, okay?"

"Right. Be cautious. Stay away from the Guard. Don't follow any leads. Go help Tommy. Stay at the station. Stand aside while you and Duke actually solve the cases. Stop being a cop."

"What?" Audrey's stomach twists painfully. "No. That's…that's not what I sa—"

"That's _all_ you say, Parker! Every day—on the days you bother to talk to me at all—that's all you ever say to me. I'm not your partner. For all intents and purposes, I'm not even your coworker. And forget friends. We haven't been that for a long time."

He's so hurt, so aching, bleeding right in front of her, that she reaches for him. Instinctively. Desperately.

He flinches.

Like he used to. Way back when, before they knew each other. The first Trouble. The first case. She reached for him and he recoiled. Because he didn't know her and expected her to be like everyone else in town. Because he didn't trust her. Because he was afraid of her.

And now he flinches away from her again.

Because he doesn't trust her.

Because he's afraid of her.

(If only she'd disappeared in a blazing meteor storm _before_ today. If only she could forget this moment already, without even having to vanish during a cosmic event.)

"I'm sorry," she whispers, and she must look as stricken as she feels because he softens, a slight change in the blue of his eyes and the set of his jaw.

"Look," he says, softly, his voice almost drowned by the waves, "maybe this was a mistake. When I asked you if you thought it was a good idea for me to be your partner…you'd just gone through something terrible. You…you wanted a friend close by so you thought that it'd be okay. But if it's not, if you want me to resign, then just _tell_ me. Don't shut me—"

"The Hunter meteor storm comes in thirty-three days."

He stares at her, his mouth hanging frozen in mid-word, and that's the only reason she realizes that she actually spoke aloud, actually released the secret pounding constantly in her head (actually began tearing down the wall between them).

"When the storm hits, I'll be gone," she reminds them both (unnecessarily). "I don't know where to, I don't know why or how or _what_. But I do know _when_, and it's too soon."

The waves ebb and flow somewhere below them. Clouds shift nebulously from shape to shape above their heads, punctuated by the flash and swoop of hungry seagulls. Dimly, from inside the bar below, they can hear the chatter of the late dinner crowd.

All of it seems far away, inconsequential and removed from them, as if they are set apart in a world all their own. All Audrey can see is the delayed realization shifting Nathan's eyes from sea-blue to sky-gray. All she can hear is his silence growing louder. All she can feel are the seconds ticking away, hours slipping through her fingers like sand while her life as Audrey Parker grows ever more ephemeral.

"It doesn't matter," Nathan finally says, shattering the strange moment. He stands upright, his hands at his sides, his weight balanced on the balls of his feet, ready and willing to move, to act, to _protect_. (He may not know anything about the Guard, but she suddenly thinks it's very fitting that he bears their mark. If anyone is suited to defend and protect, to _guard_, it is Nathan Wuornos.)

"It doesn't matter. We…we're going to figure this out. We'll find a way to stop it from happening. The coffin—we have to find the Colorado Kid. Dave and Vince definitely knew him, we'll _make_ them give us a composite sketch of him, then we'll run it through every system and record there is until we get an ID. If he's alive, then he'll have to show up somewhere, some ATM or traffic camera, a bank account, a—"

"Nathan. Nathan. Nathan!" She steps in front of him, unspeakably grateful that enough of the wall has crumbled to allow her to put her hands on his shoulders. (She's not sure, though, whether she's steadying him or herself.) "It matters, all right? It matters because it means we only have a month to stop this serial killer and help the Troubled and make sure that the Rev's men don't—"

"What?" Nathan jerks free of her hold. His eyes are narrowed, his gaze intent, as he stares down at her (as if he's never seen her before and doesn't know what to make of her; as if he's not sure he _wants_ to puzzle her out). "You're leaving in thirty-three days and you don't want to fight this? You don't want to do anything but…what? _Accept_ it?"

"Nathan, Lucy Ripley ran away, okay? She ran and Haven—the Guard or men like the Rev or the town itself—they came after her. If she couldn't get away, then—"

"She came back because of the Colorado Kid!" Nathan says desperately. "She must have. He knew some way of saving her, some way to keep her here. It wasn't anyone who dragged her back—remember? Remember that Simon Crocker went after her and she killed him. So she came back on her own to find the Colorado Kid, but he was already dead. Or hurt. Or…whatever it was. So she wrote that message—the key to saving herself. Saving _you_."

"We don't know that, Nathan. You're just guessing."

"Better that than giving up."

"You think I want this?" she demands. "You think I want to lose who I am and leave everyone I care about behind? But this is what's happened over and over who knows how many times, and how arrogant would I have to be to think that I can succeed where none of my other selves did?"

"You're not arrogant." This time, he's the one who puts his hands on her shoulders, grounding her, anchoring her with only a touch (a touch he can't even feel, and Audrey is almost overwhelmed by the urge to sink forward, to lean against him and press all her flesh against his until they are _both_ overwhelmed). "You're Audrey Parker," he says, so matter-of-factly, so fervently, that tears spring to her eyes, "and you fix things. You fix people. You fix Troubles and situations. And you have _me_ this time. Okay? I'm not going to stop until we find a way to keep you here."

There, staring into his eyes, anchored by his touch, entranced by his lightning-sharp focus, Audrey actually believes him. For an instant, a moment that stretches, she can see a future. A day when the meteor storm is shrinking into the past rather than swallowing her future, when the sky has fallen and she is still here and long years of a life in Haven spread out before her. When she's free to explore the thread that has inextricably bound her to Nathan since the first time they touched, when he pulled her free of her doomed car and tugged her into a life in Haven (with him). With time to ease into something beyond the allure of her touch and the safety of his belief in her, to find out what's beyond that, what_ could_ be.

But then she steps back (thirty-three days and that's not enough time to figure all of this out) and his hands fall away and nothing seems sure anymore.

"Right," she says, because there's nothing else to say in the face of his desperation. "I'm not giving up, Nathan. I just think we really need to focus on the Bolt Gun Killer right now. He said he loved the Colorado Kid too, so…so he must have known him. We find him, maybe that brings us one step closer to tracking down the Colorado Kid."

"Okay." He nods, resolute, determined, so steadfast that Audrey has to wrap her arms around herself to keep from moving forward into his embrace. "That ATM video was a huge lead. Even if I don't approach this Jordan woman directly, I can tail her. See what I can find out from afar."

"Okay." She nods robotically, tries for a smile but drops it before he can see how fake it is. "Sounds like a plan."

"We're going to stop this, Parker," he promises her (yet another promise, and she wishes she could believe this one, but it's too hard, too scary, to really think about).

"Of course." Another attempt at a smile, another step back.

He lets her go. Of course he does. He always has. Duke clings as tightly as she does, but Nathan stands and watches the things he cares about slip away. She'd think it weakness if she didn't know the age-old saying about letting what you love go (there's more to the saying, of course, but she can't let herself think on it, not when the only way she'll come back is when years and memories and names have built an impassable chasm between them).

Audrey turns to unlock her door. Opens it. Stares at the threshold (where, if she invited him in, Nathan would pause, would give her that extra opportunity to turn him aside, would step over only after she invited him again). At the darkened interior (that was so bright, so cozy, so homey when he stayed after her July Christmas party to clean up, to keep her company, to believe her when she told him something unbelievable that he had no memory of himself). At the empty apartment (where he slept to stave off her nightmares, where he cleaned up the mess her kidnapper left behind, where his presence haunts her nightmares simply because he's _not_ there).

There's no forethought to her next move. No calculation or second-guessing or regret.

Audrey turns away from her apartment, back to Nathan, still standing there, still watching her (still waiting for _her_, for that second invitation, for that reassurance that this is what she wants). She's moving, flinging herself forward, her hands reaching, her face tilted, her lips seeking.

He's warm and tall and startled and off-balance and awkward and stiff.

He's warm and solid and _there_ and constant and devoted and he believes in her in a way she can't understand but she_ craves_.

He's warm and kind and generous and so brave and smart and unbelievably good at doing the right thing without any incentive at all.

He's everything she loves about Haven and everything that drives her crazy about Haven and the reason she's still here in Haven and the thought that keeps her hoping against all hope that they _will_ find a way to keep her here against all the odds and all precedent and all testimony of her past lives.

He's Nathan, and this…this…this is everything.

* * *

_This._

There was a hug in the police station, in the dark, protected from shadows. A hug that shook his world and reshaped her soul.

There was a hug outside the Herald, in the daylight, out in the open. A hug that curved his lips in a soft smile and kept her warm during the long drive to the address he'd found for her. A hug and a kiss on his cheek that was nearly more, was _meant_ to be more if only she hadn't lost her courage and directed her attention from his lips to his stubbled cheek.

There have been jokes and coffee and quiet support and friendship freely offered, bravery and sacrifice and hard work, arguments and disagreements and painful silences.

And now there is this: a promise and a moment of indecision (because she _wants_ so badly and it will _hurt_ so much to give into it and then have it taken away) and a heedless leap into the unknown.

A kiss. Her hands on his face, all lines and angles and stubble and innocent eyes, and he's bent toward her, she's upturned to him, and every one of the other Audrey Parker's memories, all her own hard-won memories…none of them compare to this.

A kiss he's too surprised, too taken aback, to return.

Everything.

* * *

_This._

A mistake. A horrible irrevocable mistake.

(Because now she knows. She knows what she could have. She knows what they could share.

And thirty-three days still isn't enough time.)

* * *

Before Nathan can regain his coordination long enough to return the kiss (to learn how to hold on without letting go), Audrey slips away. Away from his embrace and his eyes and his offering of hope.

Her apartment door closes between them, glass and flimsy and impassable because neither of them make a move to brush it away.

She ran away and he let her.

Maybe, she thinks, if she does it enough times before the meteor storm, he will be conditioned to let her go forever when the sky starts falling down on them. Maybe he'll actually be happy to watch her disappear from his life.

As the moon rises to scatter the clouds, Audrey tries to pretend that that possibility does not scare her more than anything else that has kept her up every night.

* * *

The beach swirls around her, the necklace is cold in her hands, and the Colorado Kid is slumped in front of her. Dead, dead, dead, and nothing she could do to stop it. She watched it happen but couldn't save him.

"You need to stop," Agent Howard tells her.

The station is dark around her, quiet and too still, her badge on her belt, her gun ready to be drawn at a moment's notice, and there's a body slumped at a desk across from her.

"Stop what?" she says.

Nathan's eyes are blank, void, as empty as they were when she held him in her arms and screamed for the world to reset backward.

Agent Howard sighs and shakes his head. "Stop remembering," he says, and pain bursts the night shadows into fireworks that explode in her mind.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Full disclosure: this is probably my least favorite episode in the series, and I wish I could have skipped it, but unfortunately, too much Important Stuff happens. Ah well... Anyway, I hope the chapter is enjoyable despite all that!

* * *

"You okay?" Claire asks her, dressed in some ridiculous costume Audrey never would have guessed she'd wear. "You look awful."

"I didn't sleep well," she says. "Did you actually come as a cheerleader?"

Claire's eyes are a little too knowing, but she lets the excuse go in favor of defending her costume choice. It still doesn't make a lot of sense to Audrey, but she doesn't get to stand there teasing Claire for too long before a teenage Bo Peep careens into the Herald, almost knocking Audrey over, babbling about a haunted house and her missing (murdered?) boyfriend.

Despite the grim situation, Audrey can't quite make herself feel too disappointed that instead of wasting one of her remaining nights trying not to stare at the place where Nathan's desk used to be (and still is since the Teagues apparently never change anything here at the Herald, but it's missing it's orderly neatness and the scented oils Nathan always kept there, not to mention the stoic journalist-turned-cop himself), she now has a Trouble to investigate.

Thirty-two days left. Better to spend them solving Troubles (_You fix things_, Nathan said) than sitting around doing nothing productive.

(Almost twenty-four hours since she's seen Nathan, since she kissed him and ran away. Better to stay busy than go crazy imagining what he's thinking or feeling or_ doing_ right now.)

Duke, of course, refuses to be left behind, and Claire comes with them to keep the teenage Bo Peep—Tina, she finally remembers to introduce herself—calm while they wait outside. Audrey tries to insist on Duke remaining outside the house until Audrey can find out who or how many are inside, but Duke nods and nods and does whatever he wants to like always, so Audrey rolls her eyes and lets him come. (She thinks he knows that she likes having him there watching her back even if she never says it.)

And then, because nothing is ever simple, Claire apparently feels the need to come in herself and, Audrey guesses when she hears a man yelling into the room that he's Haven PD, must have called in some backup for Audrey (her heart races in anticipation until Tommy bursts into the room, gun already drawn and aimed).

"What are you doing here?" she asks, and she was talking to Duke (or maybe talking to the absent Nathan, wondering why he _isn't_ there), but everyone answers.

Duke doesn't trust anyone else to watch Audrey's back, Claire thought Audrey signaled her to come inside from the front windows, Tommy got an emergency call from Tina (the same conversation Audrey and the girl had outside the front door) and thought he should come check it out immediately. And on top of all of that, the front door has seemingly decided to move, leaving them stranded in a suffocatingly labyrinthine house.

"All right!" Audrey yells over everyone's overlapping voices. "Clearly, this isn't an ordinary house."

"Of course not," Duke snarks. "Why would Haven have _anything_ ordinary?"

"We have to find the door," Audrey says, because what else is there to say?

Duke raises an eyebrow at her. "Audrey, this is Haven. This is a house that has a door that decides, on its own, to _move_. And worse…this is the Holloway House."

"The Holloway House." Audrey gives him an impatient stare. "And?"

"Yeah, and?" Tommy interjects. "Outsiders here, remember?"

"I'm not sure I've heard of it before either," Claire admits.

Though he rolls his eyes, Audrey can't help but notice that Duke's tone turns into a storyteller's as he narrates the town legend of the man who put everything he had into building a house, then vanished overnight with his entire family as soon as it was completed. It's a disturbing story, made all the more so for the way it teases at something on the edges of Audrey's mind, as if she's heard it somewhere before.

She doesn't have much time to try to think about it, though. A scream, a few doors that weren't there before, and suddenly there's another body, Tina strung up and impaled on a chandelier, and this isn't interesting anymore.

Later, when trying to fill out the paperwork for the night's events, Audrey will be shocked to realize that what felt like an unending stint trapped in twisting walls and deadly rooms was actually only a couple hours. She will struggle to remember why some half-heard, overheard conversations clicked on by a staticky intercom with a clear agenda so bothered them all that they began to turn on each other. She won't be able to explain how overwhelming the miasma of despair was that carried them from claustrophobic room to dead ends, from hallways that left her bleeding and laid out with a splitting headache to bricked up crypts filled with the stench of death and brain-rending memories of a life she'd swear she never lived (the image of a man, a corpse given a face and a voice and emotions inspired in her own breast by Lucy just catching sight of him; the revelation of a name she didn't know but that rings so true, so deep inside her, that of course it could never have been anything else).

Later, when she's trying to order that night in her own head, it will all seem a confusing blur of distrust and betrayal and secrets, and it doesn't matter that out in the open, the house in blackened rubble behind her, she'll _know_ that creeping distrust, that painful sense of betrayal, that need to keep things secret, were completely unnecessary (conveyed by osmosis from the man whose flesh they walked through)—it doesn't matter because those feelings, that first impression, are already set in stone within them.

She's still reeling from the first flashback in that hallway with a mirror that's also a lever, still taken aback by finding Tina's body hanging from the ceiling, when suddenly, Nathan's there, hand on his holstered gun, something open and vulnerable and _waiting_ in his eyes when he first catches sight of her (and she'd give anything to have not been hanging on Duke's arm, woozy and off-balance, at that first glimpse since their kiss).

"Parker, are you okay?" he asks, but then Tommy's bursting through the door that was locked just a second ago, nearly shooting Nathan, shouting that he saw Nathan in a mirror with his gun held on Audrey. Duke's yelling and waving his own sidearm (a gift from the house, left for him in the middle of an otherwise empty hallway), Claire's trying to get everyone to calm down and think, and Audrey's just trying to stay on her feet as the room tilts around her.

"Parker called me here," Nathan says, and she has no reason at all to doubt him (can hear the relief shading his voice that she _did_ call him, that she wants him with her on a case), but she does anyway. (She kissed him, after all, then left, but he's here anyway and for as much as he doesn't hold on, he's always _there_, at every crime scene, picking her up before and after work, in her office, waiting for her at her apartment, following her here today.).

A shudder starts at the base of her spine and works its way up. This is Nathan. _Nathan_, who's never once done anything but be there for her when she wants him, who waits for her invitation twice-over before stepping over any lines…who let her go even after she kissed him, the first kiss he's been able to feel in years.

Audrey shakes off the unnatural suspicion (falling back on an immunity she can't explain), lets it shatter at her feet as she stares at the walls and mirrors and intercoms with narrowed eyes. But the others aren't so lucky.

Trying to keep the peace, Audrey sets them all tasks—and only realizes that she's once again partnered herself with Duke and Nathan with Tommy when that fledgling, hopeful look in Nathan's eyes goes out like a light.

"Interesting choice," Claire says, a sardonic edge to her voice that's not usually there. Even still, she makes sure she's wedged close to Audrey, offering her subtle support.

"Duke's going to guard the door for us," Audrey says shortly (because in a house that breeds distrust, how could she have possibly put Nathan and Duke together, or left Duke with a cop he doesn't know?). If she decides to talk to Claire about what happened the night before, it sure won't be here, now, in this house with walls that literally have ears.

"What door?"

"You're going to help me with my memories. With Lucy's memories."

Claire protests and protests again when blood begins to leak from Audrey's nose (_Stop remembering_, Agent Howard commanded her, and surely it's not a coincidence that the blood starts pouring immediately after, like he's a block in her already divided mind). It's difficult, but Audrey forces herself to remember that Claire isn't being intentionally obstructive, that she has no hidden agenda, she cares about Audrey's health.

Not that they have time for such concerns. Tempers are getting shorter, grudges are growing, too many of them are carrying weapons, and a single mistake will mean another body added to tonight's losses. No, the only option is for Audrey to pin down the nudges at the edges of her mind. Lucy helped so many Troubled; it's time for her to help Audrey.

And even without the necklace in her hands, it works. Audrey sees Holloway's wife and daughters, already dead, found too late. She hears her own voice (different intonation, different inflections, but _hers_) speaking aloud a solution. But…_more_. So much more.

The back and shoulders made infamous in a black and white photo memorializing a murder-that-may-not-have-been. A voice that makes her breath catch in her throat, saying her name (_Lucy,_ but it's never sounded as much like hers as when _he_ says it). Then…he turns. He turns and he's there and he's worried about her, and Lucy _loves_. She loves him with an unbounding force that leaves her cold and ruthless, determined to protect him at all costs, willing to do whatever is necessary to destroy anything that threatens him.

The world explodes in light and pain and darkness.

It doesn't matter, doesn't change anything or rewrite anything. When Duke pulls Audrey up, cradling her in his arms, when she blinks into being from _Lucy_ to _Audrey_, she still feels that love. Powerful. Transformative. So strong it is still trembling through her limbs and straining inside the chambers of her heart.

_James._

James, whom she loved (loves), who she wanted (wants) to protect, who loved (loves?) her and wanted (wants?) her safe in return. James, and there was a bit of Nathan in his eyes (or more likely, less welcome, it is a bit of _James_ in _Nathan's_ eyes that first drew her, that pulled her into his orbit and makes her yearn for him and kiss him even when her days are spinning away into nothing). James, alive and helping her on a case and overprotective, tall and solid and at her side (and it appears that no matter her name, no matter her memories, she definitely has a type).

Her head is cleaved in two (her heart is twinned, beating and then beating again, like a mirror image half a breath behind, _James_ in one beat, _Nathan_ in the next), pain turns the house sharp and copper-tinged, but Duke's steady hands keep her upright and balanced and Claire's voice leads her back to their dreary surroundings.

"Are you all right?" Duke asks her when she finally blinks away the image of James to see Duke's dark eyes swimming over her.

"I'm fine," she says, though her answer is belied by her tight hold on his arm, so close she can smell the sea layered into his skin.

"Right, fine," he repeats. "Because this is what everyone who's fine looks like."

"I'm fine," she says again, more firmly. "Really, Duke, you pulled me out in time, like always." The house is putting out so many negative emotions, trying to get her to question Duke's motives for being here even though she is apparently fated to kill a Crocker every generation, but Audrey's still mesmerized by the love rousing within her for James. So, in an effort to counter Holloway's anger, she smiles up at Duke. "Thank you," she says warmly, "for being here. For always looking out for me."

His face softens, his facades melting into truth as his lips tremble and curve. "Of course, Audrey. You know I'll always be here."

And she's warmed by the exchange, bolstered by that moment of sincerity amidst all the tangled webs Holloway has set for them.

Until Nathan, alone and trying to find Tommy, is led straight to them and Audrey sees the blankness of his own mask (a façade as old as Duke's, maybe, but unpolished, unpracticed, rough and raw). Until he and Claire are cut off from Audrey and Duke by a door slammed between them. Until the intercom crackles on to replay that quiet conversation between her and Duke as the mirror shows an image of Audrey clinging close, Duke's arm wrapped snugly around her waist.

"Thank you," her voice says, then a burst of a static, then her voice again with a distorted emphasis, "for being here. For always looking out for me."

And Duke's reply, lower, softer, more intimate than it truly was. "Of course, Audrey. You know I'll always be here."

Then, horribly, the image of herself and Duke in the mirror fades into the sight of Nathan standing alone, half-shrouded in shadow, listening and watching that tiny snippet of conversation as the house bends all its will to molding him in its misshapen image.

Audrey can't look away from the mirror. Can't stop hearing her voice thanking Duke and Duke telling her he'll always be there for her. Can't close her eyes on the sight of Nathan all alone, excluded once more (but this time he didn't expect it, didn't anticipate it, and that hurts worse, somehow).

In the distorted reflection, Audrey watches Nathan break. Watches something shatter in his eyes and leave him looking hollow. Watches him put his mask on (the same one he wore, complemented by his way of becoming invisible in anyone else's presence, when she first came to Haven). Watches him build back that wall they just tore down the day before, ragged and sloppy and hurried, but slathered with concrete disappointment.

"This house is really starting to make me mad," Duke mutters (he's long since turned his back on the mirror, his eyes drawn down and shoulders hunched), and like his words are a spark, soaked in the gasoline of Lucy's protective ruthlessness, Audrey feels her own rage ignite.

"I'm not going to help you," she tells the mirror. The man behind it. The soulless monster in this house he haunts.

The mirror shatters into a million pieces when she pulls the trigger and the door appears like magic. Nathan's there, in the room just beyond, Claire pulled behind the shelter of his body, Tommy coming in on his own a minute later.

The instant they are all together, Audrey tells them where to strike.

Still blank-faced (still hurting), Nathan doesn't miss a beat before firing a shot to shatter the intercom, and Duke's right behind him.

"Go," Nathan says. "Get everyone out of here. I'll shoot everything I see—just find the exit."

"Nathan," Duke tries to say, but Nathan pushes him toward Audrey (who'd like to argue herself but she's too busy trying to hide her newest nose-bleed from Nathan).

"Go!" Nathan yells. "Get her out of here!"

Duke pauses, then scoffs, then Nathan has Duke's gun as well as his own and there's no more time to argue (to rail and curse at Nathan that he is worth more than a martyr's death or the scapegoat left behind or the sacrificial lamb).

They're out the door, nearly running into Dwight, into Dave and Vince, into the blinking bomb that Dwight holds in his hands. Duke starts yelling as soon as he sees the explosive, but Audrey can't think of anything but who's left in that death-trap of a house.

"Nathan!" she shouts.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

And then, coming around the corner, running over shattered glass, Nathan's there. With a rumble and a roar that echoes in Holloway's accented voice, a chasm opens up in the floor between Nathan and Audrey, a hole separating him from safety (and she left him behind; he's her partner but she left him behind; Lucy got James out, but Audrey didn't do the same for Nathan).

"Jump!" she screams, and so of course, he does (he's never _not_ listened to her, believed her, followed her, trusted her, and what has it ever done him but get him almost killed over and over again?).

Dwight and Duke pull Nathan to safety before he can do more than teeter on the edge. Audrey doesn't let herself think, just grabs the homemade bomb from Dwight's hand and chucks it into the house.

When the house (when _Holloway_) explodes behind them (when Nathan's warm, solid body blankets her, shielding her from flying rubble), Audrey can't bring herself to even pretend to regret it.

* * *

"Next time there's a haunted house," Duke says casually, "let's _not_ go inside it. Deal?"

"Deal," Audrey says with a chuckle. "Thanks, Duke."

"Yeah." He gives her another smile, something in its shadow that she doesn't quite recognize, before he nods and ghosts away.

"I'm with him," Tommy says with an exaggerated shudder. "Most of what Haven throws at me is fine—you know, weird but fine. But that house…let's not do it again."

"That's the hope."

Tommy nods and turns to go when Audrey catches his arm. "Hey, Tommy, did you see where Nathan went?"

"He was bleeding from some shrapnel that caught him. I think Claire took him to find a first-aid kit."

"Thanks." Audrey rubs a finger under her nose just to be sure there's no more blood. There isn't, which means she doesn't really have an excuse for not being the one to notice that Nathan was bleeding. Usually, she's the one who checks him over, does her best to make sure that he doesn't just let any potential injuries attend to themselves. But then, she's been so busy trying to hide her own internal wounds from him that she hasn't had time to check for his.

"This report's going to be fun to read," Dwight comments from behind her. He's leaning just outside his office, closely regarding her.

"I'm looking forward to reading yours too," Audrey replies. "Just where did you learn to build a bomb from scratch?"

He shrugs. "I know all sorts of useful things. How to make a bomb. Which places in town to avoid. The fact that I _thought_ we were both agreed on keeping Nathan away from the Guard."

Audrey blinks at him. "We did. I told him not to approach them and he said he'd just follow the woman Dave told him about."

"Jordan McKee has a lot of built-up rage all on her own, even without the Guard behind her," Dwight says, his voice low and intense. "She's as much an explosion waiting to happen as this town. Nathan shouldn't have gone anywhere near the Guard at all."

"What happened? Did he tell you what he found out?"

"He didn't have to." Dwight hesitates, then jerks his head to indicate that she should follow him into his office. Once they're alone, out of hearing range of the bullpen, he lets out a heavy sigh. "I used to be in the Guard, Audrey, all right? They helped me when I most needed it, and I was a little bit too willing to show my gratitude—something they took full advantage of. When I finally started to question their 'requests,' some armed men showed up at my door. Bullets started flying and…and my daughter's Trouble was activated."

"Dwight…" Audrey stares at him. "I'm so sorry."

"Yeah, well, I haven't been one of them for a long time. But it's been…useful…not to burn my bridges completely. The minute Nathan went near any of the Guard, they noticed."

"But Nathan doesn't even know _why_ they hate him. He didn't even know about them until—"

"By design," Dwight says. "The Guard likes to keep tabs on those who will be helpful to them, and once upon a time, they thought Nathan was going to be…I'm not entirely sure what. Something big. Something they wanted. And then, when that didn't pan out, they blamed him."

"For what?" Audrey demands. A memory from a long time ago, when Haven was just a pitstop and Duke was a stranger, comes back to her: Duke telling her that there'd been a job opportunity Nathan had turned down and that a lot of people blamed him for it. All this time, Audrey had assumed that job was a place at the Haven PD, that he'd disappointed his dad and all the other busybodies when he hadn't passed the Academy psych eval. Only now does she begin to think that maybe it's something bigger.

"Dwight," she says, "I'm telling you, Nathan has no idea what they wanted or that they even care about him."

"And they want to keep it that way. Look, I like Nathan. I've always liked Nathan. He's a good guy with good intentions and he puts up with a lot to stay in this town even when there's nothing keeping him here. But he's safer if he doesn't know any of this. There's a reason Garland Wuornos kept him out of the loop all those years."

Audrey has barely opened her mouth when Dwight holds up a forestalling hand.

"All I know is that it involves Vince and some secret he and Garland kept between them. Other than that, the only thing I can say for sure is that Nathan can't go anywhere near the Guard. I've already warned him away, but he doesn't listen to me. So do or say whatever you have to, Audrey—but if you want to keep him safe? Make sure he drops this."

* * *

"Hey, care for some late night pancakes?" As added incentive to the invitation, Audrey brandishes the to-go boxes. It took her a little out of her way to convince Haven Joe to make them for her since he was already closed up for the night, but it's worth it if Nathan will talk to her.

Claire smiles encouragingly, even while she busies herself packing up the first-aid kit, but it's Nathan's reaction that Audrey's focused on.

She shouldn't have worried (he never disappoints her).

"There syrup?" he asks, already standing and gathering his jacket.

"Careful when you put that on," Claire warns him. "You don't want to start bleeding again."

"I thought it was just a scratch," Audrey says. She dumps the pancakes on a nearby desk and hurries to hold the jacket for Nathan. He shakes his head but lets her, and Audrey doesn't fail to notice that something about the set of his jaw eases ever so slightly. Which helps distract from the sight of bandages peeking over the collar of his shirt, descending down along his shoulder blade.

"It_ is_ just a scratch," he insists. "I think Claire just likes to pretend that she's a medical doctor."

"I didn't hear you complaining," Claire says with an arched brow.

"That's because you told me to sit down and shut up." Nathan's lips curve upward, and Audrey knows he's just pleased that Claire treats him like a normal person. "Your bedside manner could use a bit of work."

"Yeah, well, thanks, Claire," Audrey says. "Maybe he'll listen to you better than he does me."

"I always listen to you," Nathan says, all his earlier humor submerged beneath painful sincerity (painful because she's pretty sure he always hears the wrong thing, or at least _always listens_ out of context). "But," he adds, "you don't listen to me. There syrup on those pancakes?"

Audrey tries a smile though his words sting more than he (probably) meant them to. "Would we dare eat them any other way?"

"I don't see why." He holds the office door open for her, convenient enough excuse for why she doesn't take the extra moment to look back and see Claire's thoughts on this situation written all over her face.

Hands in his pockets, jacket covering up all evidence of his wounds, Nathan looks relaxed. Casual. Unaffected. Everything that he isn't. Audrey (with only thirty-two days left) can't help but wonder how many other people can look past his ambling stride to read the line of his clenched jaw and the tightness of his darkened eyes.

Still, for everything he is surely thinking (all the hurt she can read in him), he follows her without comment out of the station, down the street, and to the park bench on the outlook over the harbor.

Audrey vividly remembers the last time they came here, when he was trying to figure out how to tell her he could feel her and she asked him to be bait for a fire-wielding serial killer. It's no coincidence that she's never come here again—and no accident that brings her here today.

As much as she hated putting Nathan in danger, that was the first time they were official partners, allies not just against the secrets of Haven, but also against a common enemy (or at least, an enemy Nathan took on as his own for Audrey's sake). It's when she realized that she wouldn't get tired or bored being in Nathan's company, that everything she found out about him only made her like him more. It's when she realized that there was no leaving Haven, even if the woman she thought was her mother was gone forever.

After the Holloway House and all the divisions and misunderstandings there, Audrey wants to find that connection again. She wants to get back to when it was easy between them, when a few sarcastic comments and a smirk and a shared cup of coffee could smooth out everything this town threw at them (before she kissed him so rashly and let a door stand between them).

"So…who knew we had to worry about Troubled buildings?" she finally says when they're each settled with a box of pancakes in their laps.

"You handled it." Nathan holds the plastic fork over the pancakes, but his eyes are fixed straight ahead, staring off at something in the far distance (or just avoiding what's right next to him). "You always handle it."

"Hey." She nudges him with her elbow, desperate for him to look back at her (to stop shutting her out). "We handled it. You already forget who was the one to get us out of there?"

"It was just a bit of target training. I need the practice anyway."

She wishes the bit of sardonic humor did more than make her feel like he's still building up that wall between them, still trying to blend in while he lets the world (lets Audrey) move on without him.

"Look," she says, suddenly determined, "that house was demented. _Holloway_ was crazy. He wanted to hurt me—or Lucy Ripley—any way he could, and everything he did, everything he showed us, was just a means of tearing us apart. He wanted you to give up on me so—"

"Give up?" Nathan stares at her, and even in moonlight, she can see the sudden fire in his cool eyes (the memory of his lips against hers, of the feel of his stubbled cheeks against the palms of her hands, is suddenly nearly overwhelming). "Parker, I'm _not_ giving up. I told you that we wouldn't stop trying until we find a way to keep you from vanishing, and I meant it."

She blinks at him. There's something heavy like a stone lodged in her throat. Her heart's twinned beat is fading, _James_ diminishing while _Nathan_ grows stronger.

"No, Nathan, that's…not exactly what I—"

"I didn't come to the Holloway house because I got a call from you."

"What?" Reflexively, Audrey checks under her nose for more bleeding, just in case that's the reason this conversation keeps spiraling away from her. "You said—"

"I know, but that's because I didn't want everyone to hear the real reason." Nathan sets aside his untouched pancakes and angles toward her, focused and serious. And hopeful. Hopeful in some way she can't quite interpret. "Parker, I went to the_ Gun & Rose_ to tail Jordan McKee, just like we discussed. But I did more than just follow her. I had to," he says over Audrey's automatic protest (Dwight's warnings ringing like alarm bells in her head). "She was following _you_. Or other Guard members are—all the time. Constantly."

"She told you that?"

"No. While I was watching her, she got a call and without even hesitating, she left the diner and drove straight to the Holloway house. She talked to another man—a man with the tattoo—then sent him off somewhere as soon as you got there with the others. I saw you and Duke go inside the house, and so did Jordan. She didn't look too happy about it. In fact, as soon as Claire and the teenage girl went inside, she looked like she was going to follow you in, so I stopped her. I figured Haven's very own haunted house was dangerous enough without adding anything else to the mix."

Audrey shoves aside her own pancakes with numb hands. She's not sure if she's more disconcerted by the idea that she's being followed (has _been_ followed for who knows how long, has been watched and stalked from afar and by who knows how many people; the Bolt Gun Killer sure seemed to know just when and how to grab her from her apartment too) or once more struck by the thought of Nathan yet again throwing himself at a danger he doesn't even understand, all for her sake.

"What did she say?" she asks. "Did she say why the Guard is following me?"

"She said you were important, that Haven depended on you." Nathan looks as earnest as ever, not even a flicker in his eyes to show that he is reminded of his dad telling him the same thing, or the Rev, or Vince and Dave, or even Duke. Nothing to show that he doesn't believe it as wholeheartedly as everyone else.

Audrey's fingers actually twitch in her lap, desperate to reach out and touch him, to remind him that he's here and alive and real, that he matters just as much as she does.

But Nathan's still talking, still excited and hopeful for some reason Audrey can't understand.

"Parker, the Guard know something about you. About your other iterations. They know enough to follow you—and remember, when you talked to Lucy Ripley, she said that when Lucy tried to run, Haven sent people after her. Maybe it was the Guard. Maybe Lucy was afraid of disappearing in the Hunter, and she knew she was going to because the Guard warned her."

"Warned her?" Audrey's already shaking her head. "No. No, Lucy was afraid of whoever was following her. She thought they were going to force her to do something."

Nathan hesitates, then shrugs. "But that was Simon Crocker, right? He's the one who followed you, and according to the Rev, he worked for him. So maybe the Guard still warned you. Maybe they were the ones trying to help you. And if they were, then maybe they know how to keep you here."

"Nathan," Audrey says softly, gently, _fondly_. "You're just guessing. Did Jordan actually say what the Guard wanted from me?"

"They want you to help the Troubled." Nathan leans forward, closer to her, his eyes alight. "They want you in Haven to fix the Troubled. And that's what you do. That's what you love doing. Maybe they can help us."

Suddenly restless and prickling with urgency, Audrey stands from the bench and paces a few steps forward. "No. No, Nathan, I don't like this. If the Guard really do want me to help the Troubled, then why didn't they come and talk to me when I first got here? Why have they let me—let both of us—dangle out in the wind trying to figure everything out a bit at a time? It doesn't make sense. And…"

"And what?"

"And Dwight said that even though they claim to want to help the Troubled, they actually _use_ them. They tried to use him, and when he resisted, his daughter ended up getting killed."

"So…what?" Nathan stands too, tall and bristling, hands on his hips, chin raised (a part of her, the part that remembers all the times he's stood in the background, round-shouldered and quiet, thrills to see him so unafraid, so tall and confident and afire; another part of her shrinks with her fear for him and the target he's making of himself). "You want to ignore them? Just forget what they could know, could tell us, and…and what? I don't understand why you're giving up! Why aren't you fighting this, Parker?"

"I'm _not_ giving up!" she exclaims. "You have no idea what I've been doing to try to find the Colorado Kid, or what I've risked to—"

"You're right, Parker, I don't know. You don't talk to me anymore, you won't work with me, and now, when I finally have something that could help, it's not good enough?"

"It's not that!" Audrey tries to step toward him, but freezes when he flinches back a step. As if to protect himself from her touch. As if he has to be on guard against _her._ (She thought they were past this; apparently not. How much can one kiss destroy?) "Nathan, the Guard is dangerous, okay? Dwight said they hate you, and I won't let them come after you. All right? No matter what they may know, we can't trust them. Not if they're going to hurt you."

"That's it? _Haven's_ dangerous, Parker. You can't protect me from everything. And maybe you haven't noticed, but _no one_ in Haven likes me. That hasn't stopped me before—it's not going to stop me now."

"You can't trust them—"

"I can't trust Duke either!" Nathan explodes, all chaotic energy and frenetic movement. "But that doesn't stop you from working with him. Letting him help you. _Trusting_ him."

Audrey stares. Her heart is beating in her fingertips, straining for Nathan, longing to touch him, but she can't. She can't reach out, can't hold on, can't refuse to let go. Because he's hurting and he flinched from her and he took a step back. Because it's dangerous and the more she holds on, the more danger she puts him in.

She wanted so badly to keep their connection, to tear down that wall and build up their friendship, their partnership, their alliance, whatever it is between them (to find another moment where she could be brave and reach for him, and maybe stay there in his space long enough for him to reach back and to _hold on_).

But she can't.

She won't.

Not if it means he's going to keep risking his life for her.

Better that he suffer a little heartbreak believing that what Holloway showed him was the whole truth rather than that he be killed by the Guard or the Bolt Gun Killer or remnants of the Rev's men or any other enemies she has that she doesn't even know about.

"Duke's going to help me find the Colorado Kid," she says, her voice dispassionate, her hands clenched at her sides. "Claire's been hypnotizing me in an attempt to help me recover Lucy's memories, and it finally worked tonight. I saw the Colorado Kid and I know his name—James."

"James," Nathan repeats, and the hollowness of his voice seems to echo around her.

"I'm going to make a composite sketch and look for men named James who disappeared in 1983, and then Duke and I are going to find him. So there's no reason to go to the Guard, Nathan. We don't need them for answers."

(_We don't need you_. She knows that's what he hears. She knows it's pretty much what she said. She tries to remember that it's going to save him.)

The moon is concealed by clouds, the night hidden in shadows, when Audrey turns and walks away from Nathan.

And like she knew he would, he lets her go.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: So, finally, we're getting to stop going down toward the bottom of things and start going up. A little bit. You know, as much as we get to for Haven where things seem to get progressively worse all the time. :) Also, I didn't tag this as an Audrey/Duke story because it's really not, but I think we all know from these episodes that there is a bit of it coming up. You also know from the show that it doesn't go anywhere because the show is just as Naudrey as this story. ;)

Thanks to everyone who's stuck it out this far, through over a hundred-thousand words of an AU that we really didn't need but that I'm very much enjoying! Hope you all love it as much as I do!

* * *

Twenty-four days left. Twenty-four days. Three weeks and three days. It's not enough time. Not enough time to fix all the Troubled. To see Dwight really settle into being Chief. To eat enough of Rosemary's cupcakes to make up for all the times she'll come back in years to come without remembering how much she loves them. To get to know Claire and become as close of friends with her as she knows they could be. To sit with Duke and laugh over nothing and enjoy the companionable silence between two people who really understand each other.

Not enough time.

And yet, in some ways, it's far too much time.

Eight days since she's spoken to Nathan in anything more than polite small talk and police shorthand. Eight days since she broke his heart and walked away from him. Eight days since they've been friends or partners or allies or _anything_ but strangers. Mere acquaintances who greet each other and exchange relevant information then go their separate ways.

Eight days, and it hasn't changed anything. Nathan's still investigating the Guard, still talking to Jordan, still doing everything she tried to stop him from doing. She knows because Dwight gets madder and madder, repeatedly coming to her and demanding that she keep Nathan away—but she doesn't know how. She doesn't know what more she can possibly do to stop Nathan from throwing his life away like it doesn't matter. He didn't listen to her before, and now he doesn't listen to her about _anything_, let alone about this mission he's appointed himself.

Eight days past, and twenty-four days to go until she can forget what a mess she's made of everything. Can let it all go and step away and wait for a newer, better iteration to come and help the Troubled. Twenty-four days until she can forget the look in Nathan's eyes when she walked away from him, can stop comparing the shuttered expression he wears around her now to the smile he used to give her when they were alone.

Twenty-four days left, and she finally gets a hit on the sketch of James. (The picture, even such a crude drawing, tears at her every time she sees it, reminding her of that twinned beat to her heart, that love so great it was painful when Lucy experienced it and Audrey felt it even just in echo.)

James Cogan.

_James Cogan._

She repeats the name to herself over and over again, but it doesn't ring as true, as _important_, as his first name did when Lucy spoke it. Still, it's him. The man she loved (still loves). The man who died for her but didn't (maybe) actually die. The man who (possibly) knows how to keep her from vanishing in just twenty-four days.

It takes only a few moments to book two tickets to Colorado, and then hours of avoidance before she bites the bullet and goes to tell Nathan that she booked the second ticket in Duke's name.

"Fine," he tells her, so numb that it feels like a slap. "Better you don't go alone anyway."

And even though she's trying to distance herself from him, she can't help but say, "I thought one of us should stay here, just in case—"

"It's fine," he says again. "The Troubled are having a meeting in town to discuss everything that's been going on—I think the Guard will probably make an appearance, so I really can't miss it."

"Nathan," she begins, already knowing it's useless, but she doesn't get to finish.

"It's fine, Parker," he says yet again (she's beginning to hate the word _fine_). "We both made our choices. There's nothing wrong with it."

Twenty-four days left, and sometimes (most times), it feels like an eternity.

* * *

She and Duke leave Haven (leave Nathan) behind. It's a flight as mundane and normal as any of the ones she remembers Audrey Parker taking, hundreds of them, so routine they blur into an endless haze of waiting and rushing and packing and cramped limbs. It seems that she is trapped on the airplane for an eternity, afraid to envision what might be waiting for her in Colorado, stuck remembering, endlessly, the look on Nathan's face when she told him that Duke was going to be her companion for the trip. It seems that it's been no time at all when the plane finally lands and Duke nudges her to get her up from her seat.

(There's a small, insistent part of herself that wonders if trying to leave Haven isn't like courting death. Or at least non-existence.

The other Audrey Parker came to Haven and was erased, wiped of everything in her life that was touched by Haven and _her_-the woman who calls herself Audrey Parker and clings to that identity with everything she remembers being.

Maybe, conversely, if Audrey now _leaves_ Haven, maybe _she_ will be erased. Wiped of everything that has happened to her, everything she truly _does_ remember.

Rationally, Audrey knows, that's ridiculous. She and Nathan went to Camden tracking a few suspects only a week or two after she first came to Haven. Lucy Ripley was able to flee town in a failed bid to escape her fate. Of course she can leave Haven—it's not a prison.

Still, she can't help but breathe out a sigh when she exits the airport to find herself really in Colorado, and nothing bad has happened.)

(There's a small, insistent part of her that wonders if that sigh was born of relief…or disappointment.)

* * *

The Guard have waystations. Safe houses. A network of contacts—regular people—to help protect the Troubled and shuttle them to safety in Haven.

The sight of the symbol she's only seen as a tattoo hanging like a symbol (like a flag, a banner as they march to war) on the Cogans' house hammers in the fact that even the little she knows is questionable.

She was so sure that the Guard actually _don't_ help the Troubled, that they're exploiting rather than saving, that they keep a healthy distance of their own will rather than just to avoid Audrey.

All this time, she's been convinced that _she_ helps the Troubled, that she makes a difference, that she matters. But does she?

There are hundreds of Troubled that she knows nothing about, so many people lost and scared and hurting…and outside her reach. Even the few she encounters, the ones she can try to help…even they need more than she can give—counseling and advice and support, after she's gone, from Claire and Dwight and who knows how many others.

What is she really doing in Haven? What good is she if she can't save all the Troubled? Why is she even here at all if everyone already has all these plans and systems and networks in place to accomplish more than she ever can?

Audrey can't stop the questions, the uncertainty, the doubts. Or rather, she _could_. But she chooses not to.

(It's easier to focus on her crisis of identity and purpose than to think on the fact that James doesn't seem to be here either and maybe she will never find him at all.)

* * *

James's dad is dead and June's mind is gone and James isn't here (safe, in hiding, waiting for her to arrive so he can solve all her problems).

This whole trip, everything she's gone through to remember, it's all just a dead end.

Of course it is. Why did she ever think it wouldn't be? This is the way it goes. Mysteries and secrets punctuated by an uncovered truth that leads her to more mysteries and secrets while her truth evaporates like a mirage, leaving her stranded in the middle of nowhere with less than nothing.

No. Not quite nothing.

Duke is still here, still right beside her despite she way she hurt him and used him as if he were nothing more than a weapon. Still here, kind and teasing, accepting and amusing, distracting her when things get to be too much, letting her break down and drink as many bottles of beer as she needs to dull the sting of this latest disappointment (the weight of all her burdens shoving her down, down, down).

He's close, and he's warm, and he's loyal. His eyes are dark, his hands are long, his fingers thin and elegant, and she's noticed often how handsome he is, how mysterious and compelling, but he's never been a mystery to her. To be honest, she's not sure why Nathan and others always think of him as a wild card. Duke is a chameleon, yes, just like her, both of them able to blend in and adapt to their surroundings and the circumstances, her compelled by a force outside herself and him come to it by necessity. But for all that, he is an open book to her, a heart of gold covered in a thin veneer of rust buried beneath a shallow layer of saltwater. He's kind and good and though he may complain about having to help others, that's really what he wants to do more than anything else, just in his own way, without being forced into it or having compunctions placed on him (and if anyone can identify with that, it is certainly her).

And he's warm, so warm that Audrey gets closer, closer, so close that she begins to feel warm too. In fact, she's hot, overheating, desperate for the hidden bite of the saltwater he smells like, and she's drifting away, caught here without purpose, without reason for being, without any Troubled to help. In Haven, in that town that is both her prison and her redemption, she is weighted with expectation but not faith, pressure without support, duty without encouragement. But here, here she has no purpose but what she gives herself. She is freer, looser, unconstrained, able to drift from one current to the next.

So she does. She drifts until she falls against Duke's lips and into his arms and deeper within his heart.

The room is unfamiliar, the state is unfamiliar, the malaise that grips her is unfamiliar, but Duke is as familiar to her as anything in this world. She knows him backward and forward, knows that he will not push her away because he's asked her here, into the circle of his arms, more than once, hasn't he? Casually, always, easily, but only because then it is easier for him to accept her casual rejections.

She's hurt him, too, just like Nathan—but she doesn't know how to fix Nathan, doesn't know how to even begin, and if she were to try, it would not be so easy to fall into his arms and let everything go. No, then, it would be hard. It would be complicated. It would mean things she doesn't have enough time to decipher and figure out.

But Duke…Duke is easy and he accepts her. He doesn't ask her to be or do anything but what she wants to be and do.

And right now, right now she wants _him_. Wants to salve the wounds she's inflicted simply by being, wants to allay the hurt her previous selves have left behind for him, wants to make him, make her, make them both feel like they are not truly alone (she owes him, she will always owe him, for that one thing she tried to force him to do, back there in the backwoods of Haven, standing over a dying monster as the memory of a photo showing a happy family danced between them).

There's no way that Duke doesn't see her falling toward him, but he doesn't move out of the way. He hesitates for a split second and then he falls forward too, kisses her back, all heat and assurance and understanding.

She needs this. He needs this. It's okay. It's fine.

The heat between them builds, grows, and Audrey's skin is tingling, urgency and restlessness and _wanting_ that she can't put into words (_wanting_ for a life, for time to figure this all out, for just a short amount of space to do whatever she wants without always, always thinking about the ticking clock of her life and the mysteries that drown her). Duke's affection for her, his fondness (his love), allows her to simply_ be_.

She exists. Here, in this moment, with his hands like brands on her skin and his goatee soft against her chin. Like a deep, still pool, restful and secluded, he supports her without demanding anything of her in return, lets her float there in the center of heated water, pressed against his burning flesh.

And then her jacket comes off.

(_Why aren't you fighting this, Parker?_)

It's her shoulders that move to shrug the jacket away, but his hands that help her remove it. For some reason, in some way she can't explain, it jars her world and dissolves the pool into a collision of ripples that leave her washed up, cold and shivering, on the ashy shore.

Duke. Duke with his hands in her hair and her jacket on the bed beside them and beer bottles littering the floor and his lips against hers.

(Duke helping her take her jacket off so easily, so quickly, because skin-to-skin contact is what they want, it's where they're moving toward, it's what's about to happen, but…but if there was a different man here, a man with eyes as blue as the sky and filled with emotion so deep it could swamp the oceans…he would not take her jacket off so casually. It would be slow. It would mean something completely different. It would make his hands stutter and his pupils dilate and his breaths judder unevenly against her skin. But he'd keep going anyway so long as she gave him that second invitation, that repeated assurance that this is what she wants. _He_ is what she wants.)

In a movement she can't remember deciding to make, Audrey jerks away from Duke. She's a step away, standing alone, her hands on her hips (like Nathan, when he stood by that park bench and drew a deep, dark line between them that she'd already outlined in pale chalk).

"I only have a few weeks left," she says, "and that…that's not enough time to fix whatever this could break between us."

There's a moment, a hesitation where they are caught in a variety of moments. Where he could stand and place his hand on her bare shoulder and pull her back into heat and reassurance and she would let him just to blot out the realities threatening to crush her. Or where he could turn icy and cold and accuse her of hurting him more, now, again, on top of what she has already inflicted on him.

Or where he could accept it and accept her and let this rest where it always has between them: history they cannot remember and secrets they so carefully share between them and agendas that overlap more than they divert and a friendship always just on the cusp of more but never quite stepping into that territory.

And he's Duke, he's just like her, so eager to hold onto the things he has that he knows just when to let go, when to step back and take a breath.

So he breathes, and he nods, and he says nothing as she escapes into the bathroom.

* * *

Hot water pounds down on her, fixing her in place, keeping her from spiraling free. Audrey braces one hand against the shower wall and squeezes her eyes shut.

So close. She came so close to destroying Duke and herself (and Nathan, too, always Nathan; it seems he is always on the razor-thin brink of being destroyed by her, in one way or another). A little bit further, another moment, and she might have crossed lines that are about to dissolve into nothing anyway.

Twenty-two days.

And what about the Colorado Kid?_ James_. James whom she loves, deep in some forgotten but not buried recess of her heart. James and who knows how many others, these people who dig deep inside her and plant roots that continue to thrive even when the flowering branches above surface are stripped and hacked away.

James. She loves him. Her kidnapper told her she did and she has felt it, has heard her heartbeat shift to accommodate that newly remembered, still-foreign love.

But he isn't here. He might be dead, and even if he isn't, can she really live constrained by someone she may never know?

She loves James, but he's not hers. Not anymore. Not Audrey Parker's.

And Duke...he's like her. A survivor. A chameleon. A pragmatic. He's here for her and he won't give up on her and he will throw himself into fire to save her, but in the end, he knows when to let go. For as much as he clings to what he wants and fights for what he desires, he's pragmatic enough to face up to reality and count his losses. In the end, he'll duck, he'll hunker down, he'll endure.

And that's good. That's wonderful, because it means she doesn't have to cut him off to save him from the aftermath of her imminent disappearance.

But Nathan…

Audrey shudders and curls in on herself, the water pinpricks of hurt against over-sensitive skin.

Nathan has no sense of self-preservation. He doesn't know how to prioritize, how to set up boundaries and safeguards and hedge himself in premature protection. He's solid and unwavering, constant and sure, and somehow, by believing she is as fixed as he is, he makes her just as whole and nearly as unwavering.

_You fix things_, he's told her over and over again, but here, away from him, feeling him getting further and further away even when he's within arm's reach…he's the one who fixes _her_, sets her in place and gives her the will to stay there.

_Why aren't you fighting this, Parker_? he asked, and she thought he was mistaken, but he's right.

She's given up. She gave up, in some ways, as soon as Duke told her how little time she has left.

She gave up on helping everyone, gave up on being the one who can solve the Troubles, gave up on staying in Haven or discovering all the secrets she's been trying to uncover.

Gave up on Nathan (and that's why she fell forward into Duke, isn't it, because she knows there's not enough time to figure out the depth of _more_ that's always in Nathan's eyes and the _more_ she feels straining at her own self whenever she thinks of him and his fixed faith).

It's not being away from Haven that's left her spiraling helplessly.

It's being away from Nathan.

It's this wall between them.

Audrey sinks to the tiled floor and wraps her arms around herself as the water drenches her.

Twenty-two days left, and it's just enough time to realize just how much she won't have.

Twenty-two days?

No. No, she needs more time than that. She needs weeks and months and years and _decades_, time enough to make Nathan stop flinching whenever anyone reaches for him, to even make him stop staring so reverently when _she_ touches him, to make it so normal for him that _he_ will reach for her first, without pausing or second-guessing or overthinking.

She needs more time.

It's time, she decides as she regains her feet and shuts off the water. Time to take up the sword and start fighting again (if not for herself, then for Nathan).

* * *

It's thoughts of chameleons and Duke's (forgiving, accepting) comment about redheads that has Audrey buying the cheapest red wig she can find and heading back to the retirement home. It's surprise and anticipation that has her breathless and trembling when her gambit actually works and June calls her Sarah (another name, another identity as alien and unknowable as Lucy).

It's astonishment and incomprehension that paralyzes her while June's words echo and rattle and bang around her skull.

"James…is my son?" she asks the world, and like a puzzle piece sliding into place, it fits. _Clicks_ with a resounding neatness.

James, her son. Sarah's son. Lucy's son._ Audrey's_ son. She has lived at least three lifetimes and she has a son and she loves him. She _loves_ him. Loves him so much her heartbeat is twinned again (_James_ strong and defiant and so settled within her it has left grooves in every one of her cells), but this time she doesn't even care because James is her son and Nathan is most decidedly _not_ and everything seems somehow comprehensible and attainable again and the first thing Audrey wants to do, the _only_ thing she can think to do with this piece of information, is to call Nathan and let him know (even though he won't understand why it matters so much, she knows that, but it's all right because James is her son and she's not going to let the Hunter storm take her away from James who might need her and Nathan who wants her, and everything is going to be okay).

"Parker?" Nathan's voice (his voice saying her name the way only he says it) is so welcome that at first Audrey doesn't even register how confused he sounds. Until he asks, "Are you okay? What's wrong?" and she remembers how long it's been since they've called each other for anything other than work. It wasn't so long ago, really, that they called each other every evening no matter that they'd spent all day together. It wasn't so long ago that not hearing from her would have made him lead whole search parties out after her and his hands would shake when he finally found her and his voice would break on her name just before she threw herself into his arms and he'd stay with her all night to calm her nightmares and make her pancakes in the morning.

How has she managed to unravel their…their friendship, their partnership, their alliance…_them_…so quickly?

(For the first time, it occurs to Audrey to wonder if twenty-one days is too little too late if she's looking to rebuild rather than just preserve.)

"Nothing's wrong," she tells Nathan. "I was just…calling to check in."

"Oh." There's a pause. "Well, the meeting with the Troubled was pretty divisive, but if there were Guard-members there, they didn't announce themselves."

_James is my son_. The words are on the tip of her tongue like a key to unlock a door in the wall between them. In some ways, after all, that wall began with one stone, a rock engraved with her question:_ Did Lucy love the Colorado Kid?_

But the words won't fall. Partly because it seems like a truth too big, too revelatory, to be conveyed over the phone. Mostly, though, it's because she's selfish. Because she wants to _see_ Nathan's face when she tells him. Wants to be able to wait until the news sinks in and he blinks, then she wants to reach out and take his hand in hers…and see this new beautiful revelation turn the angles of his face soft and blurred with awe.

"Nathan," she begins, but she's waited too long. He's already speaking, his voice overlapping hers.

"There's a new Trouble, someone killing people and then blackmailing their families to bring their loved ones back from the dead before sundown."

Audrey blinks. "Wow. That's a new one."

"Yeah. Dwight has Tommy working on it with me."

There's awkward silence for a moment. If there's one thing Audrey can't stand, it's awkward silences. Better to tell a corny joke or make a blunt observation than to let the quiet grow too loud. That's one of the things that's always made Nathan so comforting to her, that even when he doesn't speak, even when they are quiet and only the Bronco's engine can be heard between them, she feels safe. Secure. Companionable. She's never quite figured out how he can do that, transform silence into connection (but then, he's always been able to communicate so much even in the smallest of things), and it hurts, now, to feel this awkwardness between them.

"How's it going there?" Nathan finally asks, almost tentatively (as if he doesn't expect an answer but cannot help but ask).

"Um, good. James isn't here, but we've found out some things. Big things. I'll tell you all about them as soon as I get back, okay?" She takes a deep breath—and makes the plunge. "Maybe over dinner? We'll be back this afternoon, so I can meet up with you then?"

Even over the phone, she can hear his breath catch. "Okay. Yeah, sounds good."

From the monosyllabic Nathan, that's downright effusive.

Smiling, Audrey nods. "Okay. Later today, then."

"Yeah. And, Parker?"

"Yeah?"

"I…I'll see you soon."

It'd be the perfect conversation if she just hung up then. But she doesn't. She lingers, imagining his face, wondering what he really meant to say there at his pause. She lingers-and Duke calls her name from the bathroom, asking her if she's seen his shirt (in the same room, so casual, so intimate, evoking images in her mind of that thoughtless, drunken kiss and how easy it was to let herself fall into Duke).

"Later, Parker," Nathan says, something hollow in his voice.

And the dial tone rings in her ear (as sharp as the edges of that wall between them).

* * *

There's nothing short about the return plane trip except the leg room. Like a record stuck on an irritating scratch, all Audrey can think about is that flat tone in Nathan's voice, about how often she's heard him speak in that tone since her kidnapping. About just how badly she wants to smooth that hollow note away and instead hear that uptilt to his words that only happens when he's pleased about something.

Because she wants nothing more than to reach Nathan, she's not really surprised when Duke curses and pulls over onto the side of a road with a flat tire. Obstacles are so much a part of her life that they seem more commonplace than the fact that she can travel away from and then back to Haven with no more side effects than a sense of urgency falling on her and crushing her as soon as she's back where she belongs.

She can't wait any longer.

Audrey calls Nathan.

"Parker?" he asks, sounding just as surprised to hear from her now as before.

"We're back," she says, and then, because even when they can't say any of the important stuff, they can always talk about Haven's strangeness, "How's the investigation into that blackmailing resurrection Trouble going? Sounds interesting enough that I'm sorry I missed it."

"Oh, you can still catch it." There's a wry note to the words and Audrey's lips curve up to hear it. "I'll text you the coordinates if you really want to help."

"Partners, right?" she asks, so happy to be given back this one thing already.

Another silence (this one not awkward, but something else, something she's not sure how to define). "Yeah," he says eventually. "Of course."

And that's it, but she's not too worried because she has his coordinates and she'll see him in moments.

She'll tell him that James Cogan is her son, that her _son_ is the one who knows how to save her, that it's her_ son_ that she loved. And maybe then he'll blink and stare and let his lips tilt upward ever so slightly. Maybe then the wall will fold inward and fall on its own.

"Ready?" Duke asks, and Audrey starts, surprised to see him putting away his tools in the back of his Land Rover.

"Already?"

He raises an eyebrow. "It didn't feel that fast to me. Of course, I was the one doing all the work while you were…what exactly were you doing?"

"Making plans," she says, and smiles to herself.

There's a Trouble, but she and Nathan help the Troubled, so it won't take long surely, not if they're working together (not now that she refuses to just give in to the slow inexorable slide of time toward the Hunter storm). Soon, everything will be better. Soon.

Duke pulls the Land Rover to a halt just in front of a driveway long enough to lead up to a luxurious cabin, the sort that's only lived in part of the year. Audrey doesn't even wait for Duke to shut the engine off before she has the seatbelt off and is reaching for the door handle.

A sharp crack splits the air.

The bushes rustle, as if flinching away from the imperious noise. Time itself seems to slow.

Another crack (gunshot, her mind with its implanted FBI memories immediately identifies).

Nathan. Nathan's here and she wasn't and that was two thunderbolts, two gunshots, and Audrey can't even think of reaching for her phone and pressing that worn and grooved 1 because why should she? He's here, he's just around that bush there and she can already see him in her mind's eye, tall and upright, feet spread, hands holding his gun with precision, eyes laser-focused on whatever the danger is ahead of him, mind instinctively running over ways he can get between any innocent and that danger.

The image is so strong, so clear, in her mind that it takes her a long, distorted moment to register what actually waits for her around the cover of that bush.

There's no tall figure. No pointed gun. No danger shrinking away.

Instead, there's a sturdier figure, boxier, shorter, his gun held in a hand dangling down by his side, and his dark eyes are panicked.

There's an empty space where there should be another cop. A blank void that allows her to see sky and greenery and a car.

And then, when her eyes slip (almost against her will) down, down, down, past where that tall figure in her mind's eye should be, down past where _Nathan_ should be, there is something she cannot comprehend.

Dark against green grass and brown gravel, slim and smaller and thinner than she's ever thought of him before, splayed out, limp.

Her mind comes up against a block (self-imposed) and she can't see what's in front of her, not fully, not completely, just flashes that sear and burn and scar.

A hand laid out against the ground.

A suit jacket crumpled, wrinkled and dusty.

A splash of red. Spreading.

Blue eyes. Staring.

Nathan.

* * *

Nathan dies.

The day does not reset.

* * *

Nathan dies. Died. Is already dead by the time she reaches him, drops to her knees, feels her throat scraped and her chest cleaved by the desperate keening of his name.

The day does not repeat.

* * *

Nathan dies. She is too late, far, far too late, all the little touches and caresses and tears she denied him but now pours over him completely useless. Redundant. Empty without the spark in his eyes that flares whenever she voluntarily reached out to him.

The day does not rewind.

* * *

Nathan dies. Died. Is gone and fled somewhere even her Troubled immunity cannot reach. He's gone and though her mind (her heart, her entire being) continually stops and starts and restops and restarts on this horror, the day stubbornly continues to move forward.

As if everything hasn't changed now. As if Nathan isn't _everything_.

No. No. No. This is impossible. She needs a reset, a restart, a redo, a re—

Resurrection.

_Resurrection._

"Where is the girl who brings back the dead?" she demands.

(And finally she can breathe again.)

* * *

Before she came to Haven (if she ever _wasn't_ in Haven), she thought she knew herself: a lonely orphan who called herself a free agent and found a cause, a purpose, and a life in helping others.

Once she got to Haven (got_ back_ to Haven), she realized just how little she really knew herself: a woman with implanted memories and a stolen name, with a convoluted past and an immunity to Troubles, with multiple connections to Duke and his family and an immediate fondness for Nathan.

Now, with Nathan cold and wrapped in a blanket that does nothing to hide the gaping wounds in his chest, Audrey realizes the most important truth of all: it doesn't matter who she is if Nathan is not there to look at her (_look_ with that look in his eyes of belief and certainty and faith and devotion) to make her real.

Without him here, everything she took for granted (her compassion, her morality, her ethics, her intuition) all goes up in the smoke it really is to reveal the cold ruthlessness buried beneath all those shiny (mirages) ideals.

"You have no idea who I am or what I am," she tells Moira.

And she doesn't care. Nathan is dead and the sun is setting and Tommy (the cop she sent Nathan to, over and over again, to keep him safe and away from her) is the Bolt Gun Killer, and she does not care.

None of it matters. How can it matter without Nathan there, always at her side, ready to twist himself between her and harm, to make of himself a living shield, to look at her and remind her that she is more than the sum of these mysteries and secrets they are tangled up inside?

He's still here, lying on the floor of this abandoned house (left behind when it's not expedient just like she left Nathan behind just because it was hard being around him and _trying_), still here, but not. His eyes are closed (she remembers the way his lashes tickled her palm when she closed them, remembers thinking that he would have delighted in that feeling, but she was numb to it), his limbs splayed out, and he would _hate_ it. Hate being so vulnerable, so laid bare before anyone and everyone.

Once, on a day she's done her best to bury deep and forget, he was vulnerable in front of a crowd. Blindfolded and with his arms bound behind his back, forced to kneel in a clearing as the Rev breathed down his neck and a woman he thought of as at least a friendly acquaintance betrayed him and Duke held a knife over his throat.

Remembered terror claws at Audrey's throat, metallic and overpowering, the surge of adrenaline that had her forgetting all rational thought and firing a shot in warning to get all those weapons away from Nathan. And then…when there were gunshots and chaos and the Rev fell from a bullet she will never regret, when Nathan toppled beneath a body and there was blood, so much blood, she couldn't tell if it was his or the Rev's…

So much terror. So much panic. So much rage.

Audrey remembers it now, and it's nothing, _nothing_, compared to today. Today, twenty-one days before the Hunter storm, when Nathan's heart has stopped beating and his lungs have stopped working and his eyes are glassy and covered.

He's dead.

He's dead, and it _matters_. It's _all_ that matters.

Moira is crying, finally broken and crushed, Noelle is a body laid out like a mirror sacrifice to Nathan, Duke is kneeling over Moira with blood on his hands and disbelief etched into his eyes, and the Bolt Gun Killer is on the run, and Audrey…Audrey can't move. Can't think. Can't do anything but _realize_ (too late).

Everything she's done, all the lines she crossed and ideals she trampled to win Moira's Troubled touch on Nathan's brow…for nothing.

Everything she's done, all the walls she built and the cruel things she said and the distorted implications she let stand just to give Nathan some measure of protection, to keep him safe from her, to ensure he lives a long and full life…all for nothing.

He's not safe. He's not happy. He's not protected.

Like a last resort, a final test, Audrey reaches out with a trembling hand and lays it flat against Nathan's cheek.

Nothing.

Not a flicker. Not a flinch. Not a sparkle of awe.

He's cold and stiff and everything that's _not_ Nathan, and kneeling here at the edge of devastation, Audrey uncovers a truth (one that will _not_ vanish like a mirage, but remain embedded and strong, the cornerstone and foundation of everything she is).

"I've always loved you, Nathan," she confesses.

(And she has, of course she has. From the moment he pulled her to safety and accepted every strangeness she threw at him and looked at her so patiently, so resignedly. From the moment he looked at her and saw her and knew her, even before glancing at her badge, and offered her a ride and help and pancakes. There's always been something about him that has drawn her, that has made her let down her guard around him and trust him unwaveringly. And everything she's found out about him, everything that has passed between them, has only strengthened those first, enduring feelings.)

"I always will love you."

(And she will, of course she will. When the storm comes for her and sweeps her, willingly, into its grip, when _she_ fades and another woman's memories take her place, when she comes back to Haven to learn its secrets all over again; even then, she will love him, though she will not know why the skies and the seas remind her of eyes or why she will feel an emptiness at her side or why she will look for a partner but never _quite_ find one to measure up to a ghost she doesn't even recollect; still, she will love him, a phantom weight in her heart tethering her forever to Haven, to his resting place.)

The night before (an eternity ago), when she succumbed to the pull of Duke's lenient, accepting care, when she realized how easy it would be to give herself over to him in fondness and in the feeling of debts owed (to him personally and to whatever happened to his father, to his grandfather), it didn't feel right. It was just _off_ enough that she pulled herself away (_Why aren't you fighting this, Parker?_ ringing in her ears). Because where Duke's love demands nothing, Nathan's is the opposite.

Nathan's love demands things of her, expects things from her, _believes_ things of her. His eyes drink her in and his hands shake for her, but it is all motivated by his belief, his faith that she can do more, accomplish more, _be_ more.

His love, his pressure and expectation (but unlike Haven, his expectations are backed by support, by help, by faith), it is hard and it is complicated and it is layered in meanings upon meanings, implications upon commitment upon trust.

But she wants it. She _craves_ it.

Earning his love is like winning something so valuable no one else can ever achieve it. It's like the wind, straining and pushing and defining, uncontrollable and unknowable, sometimes warm and other times carrying a shiver, but without fail it holds her aloft, bears her up, gives her flight and freedom and definition even as it fixes her in place.

And now the wind is gone, an updraft that faltered and vanished and she's a leaf falling, tumbling end over end, shriveling in on herself until she's unrecognizable, like a ball of paper crumpled and tossed away, like…like anything else. Any metaphor or simile, any analogy or comparison—anything but real. Anything but concrete. Anything but kneeling here and _not_ having Nathan alive and breathing and as stubborn as her. Anything but this reality she doesn't want and refuses to accept.

(And twenty-one days is too long, far too long, she will have to stand out in the night and scream for it to come and take her now before there is nothing left of her to _be_ whisked away and reset.)

"Nathan," she whispers, but there is no response but the molten tears branding her cheeks and the ice cold of his hand in hers.

Duke rises to his feet somewhere behind her. "Audrey," he says, as if she is supposed to still care about anything with Nathan dead. Without his love to keep her silhouetted, to take her to new heights, she is as cold as him and buried deep, ruthless and implacable (like Lucy when their son was threatened by Holloway). She is something that would have terrified even the Rev, and has taken a brittle soul and molded her into a Troubled tool (something she swore she'd never do again), and now does not care to save any more souls.

And she would do it all again. She would threaten and wound and rend and tear down the world all over again—because Nathan's hand is warming in hers.  
His chest rises as he takes a breath.

His eyes flutter open to the last, silent gasp of sunset.

"Hey, Parker," he says, as if completely unsurprised to find her leaning over him. But then, she is still holding one of his hands, and one of her tears has plopped down atop his face to trace a silver trail down the angle of his cheekbone.

She's laughing and crying as he slowly comes back to himself, blinking and moving stiffly until he is sitting upright, propped on the floor against the sofa behind him.

Then, finally awake and more in control of himself, he looks at her.

He was dead. He didn't hear her confession, her realized truth, but maybe he saw something of it in her own, unguarded eyes. Maybe he felt it in the residual heat of that tear passed from her cheek to his. Because his stare is intense, searching, _bewildered_.

And it's too much. Audrey stands. She crosses her arms over her chest.

And she remembers the man who shot those two bullets that are buried in some tree beside a wooded driveway. She remembers the man who hit her and questioned her and turned her world upside down. Who burned an innocent woman to ashes.

"Tommy," she says. "We have to go after him."

"I know where he's going," Nathan says. "Or at least where he's been. I got a look at all his GPS coordinates."

"Then let's go," she says. And in her veins, lining her bones, calcifying her heart, there is only cold, cold rage.

* * *

Dave and Vince are beaten and bloody but still uncommunicative. By now well used to it, Audrey follows their directions and races out the backdoor to see Tommy Bowen on a boat, already racing away from her, as always one step ahead.

"Aim carefully," she tells Nathan. "We need answers."

He doesn't argue, just like he hadn't stopped to listen to anyone's objections when he stood to head here with her. He's still wearing the suit covered in his own blood, though he's lost the jacket, which makes the holes in the frayed shirt even more apparent. Still, his hands are steady as he raises his gun, and Audrey tries not to think about how unfair she's being asking him not to make a killing shot at the man who just looked into his eyes and shot _him_. Twice.

In unison, she and Nathan fire, again and again, a rolling thunderstorm of intention and firepower, focused and precise.

The boat goes up in a roiling fireball.

"No!" Audrey gasps, but it's too late (and in the Holloway house, Nathan never missed once; back during the Trouble with the shadow man, he didn't miss that single shot at a lightbulb; it's her hands that have been trembling and unsteady, her who must have missed and hit the gas tank and lost her all her answers).

Disappointment is heavy and incriminating on her shoulders, and she can't help it.

No. That's a lie.

She _can_ help it. She could so easily make a different choice, a separate decision.

But she doesn't.

She chooses to let her bones lighten and her heart turn from disappointment toward relief (still so heavy it blocks out the sky). She chooses to lean and settle herself against Nathan, to rest her head against the chest that rises and falls in constant, beautiful breaths.

His heart stammers, his hands jolt, but she doesn't move away (doesn't change her mind), and so Nathan reaches up and wraps his arms around her shoulders (a weight so much lighter, more freeing, than the usual weight she carries).

Audrey closes her eyes on her burning secrets and breathes in the maple-syrup-ink-wind smell of Nathan.

_This_ is what matters.

(There will be time for rage later.)

* * *

Audrey wants nothing more than to stay close beside Nathan until she can both convince herself that he is alive and well and here to stay and also to tell him the news that has changed everything inside her. It only stands to reason, then, that as soon as they get back to the station, Dwight pulls Audrey in one direction for a report and Claire pulls Nathan in the other.

"If anyone needs therapy, it's the guy who died," she says with a mixture of concern, humor, and wisdom.

Shrugging, Nathan twitches his hand away from the almost-touch Claire laid on his wrist and follows her.

Audrey watches him go for a long moment, then gives into the inevitable and follows Dwight into his office.

By the time she's finally finished filling him in (though not on the truth from Colorado, not yet, not until she tells Nathan) and they've hashed and rehashed how Tommy Bowen can possibly be the Bolt Gun Killer against the weight of every piece of evidence they've gathered, it's late.

Nathan's waiting for her, passing the time by filling out their paperwork (Garland was right, after all, that a partner would be good helping with all those to-be-done reports). At some point, he's changed into police department sweats someone must have loaned him; Audrey guesses Stan since they're roughly the same height and Stan's always been friendly toward Nathan.

"Ready?" he asks her as he sets aside the paperwork.

"More than ready," she says.

It's not until they're in the parking lot, matched stride to stride, that Audrey realizes how strange it is for them to be here. Her car is still parked at the _Gray Gull_, of course, left behind when Duke picked her up to take them to the airport, but it has been weeks since Nathan drove her everywhere. Yet he waited for her without question and she accepted that he did without hesitation, and it would be so easy to believe that everything could go back to normal so quickly.

Except that he asks nothing about Colorado (as if the memory of Duke's voice in her room is too fresh, too painful) and she cannot spit out the truth on the tip of her tongue (as if saying it will bring her back to a moment before he was resurrected and she got another repeat).

(She's so terrified that there won't be another repeat. That two miracles to bring Nathan back to her are two more than she ever should have gotten, and if she has used up all her miracles, how can she possibly expect to escape the Hunter?

But then, if she has to choose between saving herself and saving Nathan, she would pick him every time.)

When he pulls up at the _Gray Gull_ and puts the Bronco into park, Audrey lets the moment stretch between them. No words, but it's okay. He's alive to hear them whenever she says them and they have time (twenty days left).

"Thank you," he finally offers. "For what you did to bring me back."

Audrey looks away to hide the lump in her throat. "Yeah, well…Dwight didn't seem to think it was the most admirable thing."

"Well, I'm the one who died," Nathan says dryly, "and I think it was the most anyone's ever done to me."

It's on the tip of her tongue to tell him that Duke was broken, in some indefinable way, when Nathan was dead, that he risked life and limb to bring Nathan back and to go after his killer. She closes her mouth over the words, reluctant to invoke Duke's name and break whatever truce has sprung up between them.

"You would have done the same for me," she says when she can trust herself to speak.

Nathan's lips tilt upward. "You're immune, Parker. I wouldn't have to."

"But still…you would. That means a lot, Nathan."

She doesn't break his gaze, doesn't break the tension with a bad joke, doesn't flee into her apartment. And gradually, bit by bit, some tension leaks out of his frame.

But even with such a limited time left to her, she can't seem to help but break things (break him).

"Partners," she says, pleased, and Nathan flinches, a tiny recoil that echoes like the gunshots she's sure will be haunting her nightmares.

"Partners," he says, dully. "Don't worry, Parker. I got it. Friends. Partners. Allies. You don't have to keep reminding me."

"What?"

Nathan points with his chin to something ahead. "Looks like Duke's waiting up for you."

Sparing a glance to see that Duke is waiting at the foot of the stairs leading up to her apartment, Audrey shakes her head. "He's probably waiting to see _you_," she begins, but Nathan scoffs.

"Sure. Anyway, thanks again. Good night, Parker."

She's frozen, numb, too slow, too clumsy at rebuilding rather than tearing down, and before she can say any of the secrets she's learned about herself since going to Colorado and coming back to a body, he's gone.

"You okay, Audrey?" Duke's touch is gentle, welcoming, warm.

Audrey forces a smile and a nod. "Sure," she says (unconscious echo of Nathan's own pale lie).

Duke spots the lie, but he lets it be. Just smiles and serves her a drink before sending her up to bed.

(Audrey stays up way too late staring at the ceiling over her head and wishing she'd had the courage to ask Nathan to stay the night.)


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: So sorry about the long wait between chapters - it has been a busy summer! On the plus side, though, I've finally finished writing 'Allies,' so there shouldn't be any more delays. This was probably the hardest chapter to write since there were a lot of transitions in it, and I hope you'll all forgive my indulgence with Sarah - I just couldn't help myself! Hope you all enjoy and don't hesitate to let me know what you think of it!

* * *

The station is nearly abandoned this early in the morning, though Audrey's not surprised when Nathan gets there shortly after she arrives. He blinks to see her and mutters that he should have grabbed an extra coffee for her, but his movements when he settles down to stare at the case board are so rote, so routine, that Audrey can suddenly guess just how often he's spent nights and early mornings working on this case for her.

They pass the time easily with talk about Grady's Troubled tattoo on a clearly Caucasian arm and Tommy's arrival in town_ after_ Audrey's kidnapping and the elapsed time between when Audrey heard Roslyn's voice and when Roslyn supposedly died.

It's not that they're making much headway, but Audrey resents the intrusion of a special delivery letter anyway. Even if it's only about the case, this is the longest she and Nathan have talked in months.

But then she reads the letter with its familiar handwriting and wry voice, and her world is once more turned upside down.

Duke. Duke, who she needs. Who's been there for her. He's trapped in the past, and it's true that Haven will never stop surprising her.

Still, as long as he's safe, which the letter seems to assure, then it's almost humorous, in a Haven sort of way. Until they approach the seemingly harmless old man with his tomato plants and oblivious manner. Until he looks at Nathan and his eyes go wide—and Nathan vanishes into thin air (without even a meteor storm to mark the passing).

Audrey feels as if she is once more stuck in a repeating day, only this time instead of losing all the men she cares about, one by one, she loses Nathan over and over again in ever more creative ways.

The old man is gone, Claire is acting strangely, showing up out of nowhere and pulling her aside, and Audrey herself wonders if maybe Nathan never came back from the dead at all and she broke her own mind (and the world around her) just to deny that fact.

"Nathan died," Claire says, as if it doesn't make Audrey's heart stop in her chest. "He died protecting you from the Rev. Well, that's the story anyway. Some people think that maybe—"

But then Garland's there, alive and well and looking so different but so familiar at the same time that Audrey has no time to let Claire's admission sink in.

A long hug that Audrey never would have offered before the man died in front of her (before she saw how wounded Nathan was by his loss; before she realized just how much Garland was juggling behind the scenes) leaves Audrey feeling just a bit more in control of herself.

"This isn't the real Haven," Audrey insists.

Claire shrugs and reluctantly goes along with it, though she seems much more interested in getting them all out of town than fixing the Trouble.

Garland studies Audrey a long minute, then nods. "Okay. So let's get the real Haven back."

The breath whooshes out of her. It's been so long since she's really tried to convince anyone besides Nathan of a mind-altering, reality-bending Trouble, and Garland's easy acceptance is so reminiscent of Nathan's constant belief that Audrey _knows_ she can fix this. She will fix this.

Though that's a bit hard to do surrounded by angry men with a gun pointed straight at her head.

Audrey only has time to close her eyes (to think of Nathan, standing beside her in a bloody suit, taking her weight without shifting at all, his arm warm and strong around her).

Then everything shifts again and she's standing in front of Stuart Mosely and Nathan and Duke are both behind her. Panic has her gesturing them away just before she turns and manages a few words in Stuart's direction (she couldn't swear to what they are, though, all her attention on the two men hopefully getting very far out of Stuart's sight).

Hurrying around the house, the vise around her chest loosens at the sight of Nathan and Duke standing there. Both of them watch her come, something strange in their eyes. Duke seems to assess her, cataloging the way she moves and talks (already demanding answers from them), as if he's comparing her to someone.

Nathan looks some strange mixture of startled and satisfied, as if he's already made the comparisons and drawn conclusions and now finds them proven correct.

It's strange, but not as strange as the way they both answer her questions as vaguely as possible.

* * *

"Nathan!" Audrey catches him before he can follow Duke away from Mosely's house. She's wasted too much time already. Who knows when one of them will vanish again. It's time to seize the moment.

He stares down at their joined hands (Audrey can't quite make herself pull away) before he looks back up at her. She can't even begin to interpret what's going on in his head.

"Nathan, there's something I have to tell you. I've wanted to tell you since even before we got back, but so much has happened and we've been busy and, well, you _vanished_, so I just haven't had the chance—"

His fingers tighten over hers, interweaving between hers (making _her_ breath stagger and her words catch in her throat in response to his surprising boldness).

"Parker," he says, something extremely soft in his voice. "What is it?"

"It's James Cogan," she says, and can't help but smile at the name. When his hand goes limp in hers, she tightens her grip. "I found out who he is to me. Well, to Sarah."

"To...Sarah?" There's something very still about Nathan, as if he's a rabbit caught in the shadow of a hawk, poised to run at the slightest wrong move.

"Nathan," she says, "he's my _son_."

Breathless, she waits for the delayed realization. For the smile. For the hope.

Instead, his eyes widen right away. He swallows.

"Your son," he repeats.

"Sarah's," she clarifies, confused.

"Sarah's son." His eyes go glazed and unfocused, and then he's tugging his hand free of hers and backing away.

"Nathan?"

"I'm…I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," he blurts, and then he's gone (the rabbit fleeing its predator, but that means she's the hawk and how can that be?).

Eighteen days left, and she's never felt more lost.

* * *

Sleep has been harder and harder to catch, her days slipping away like sand in an hourglass, disappearing faster the closer to the end she gets. It seems anathema to waste any of her thirteen days still left to her with mere sleep. For the past couple weeks she's tried to pretend that's the only reason she tosses and turns (well, that and the half-glimpsed dreams of a life that ended, for all intents and purposes, on a beach).

Now that she's washed Nathan's blood off her hands and felt the cold certainty of death wrench truth from her throat…now she knows what's really keeping her awake, urgency singing through her veins, anticipation tripping her heartbeat, a yearning she's avoided giving a name.

What makes it worse (what she secretly loves) is knowing that if she pulls out her phone, if she clicks that 1, if she lets another truth be wrenched from her (I need you, every bit as true as the other he didn't get to hear), he'd be here. He'd leave his bed—or more likely, their office—and drive through dark streets to reach her, and knock so imperatively (for all he pretends to diffidence for the town's sake, he finds assurance where she's concerned) and step in so timidly (for all his hard-won confidence, he is so tentative around her). He'd stay with her, sleep on her couch to let her sleep, to reassure her when she wakes from nightmares, to make her feel real when she's afraid that she'll vanish any instant, to fill her remaining hours with meaning.

(Or, if she forgot about her deadline, if she let herself give into the craving that's keeping her pacing…if she reached for his hand, and ran a finger up his forearm, along the line of his neck, stepped closer to ghost her nose against the angle of his jaw, moved her hand to the back of his neck to recreate that first touch he'd felt in years… She could so easily overwhelm him. She could so easily, so temporarily, give him what _he_ wants, could choose to answer that look of _more_ in his eyes. And he would let her.)

Audrey sits at the piano and lets out a glimmer of Lucy in the melody that fills the cloying silence. She wanders the confines of her apartment, runs her fingers over the eclectic decorations (half her—or the real Audrey Parker, anyway—half whatever was left in here when Duke gave her the keys), tries to pretend that the feel of this plaque or dish or throw is what her fingers are actually itching for.

The hours slip away slow, so slow, as the days rush past too quickly to be savored.

Another song at the piano, Lucy a ghost in the room, Audrey's eyes on the black and white keys, as separate but inseparable as the twin beats of_ James_ and_ Nathan_.  
A son, she thinks (less dangerous to think of the son she can't reach rather than the man she so easily could). She has a son.

It's funny, but she's never thought about having kids one way or the other. With memories of being an orphan and a personality hyper-focused on her job, the thought never occurred to her before she got to Haven. Since she's been here, the closest she's come to thinking about it was watching Nathan melt and fold and unbend in the presence of a baby, take it in his arms and do nothing to hide his emotions in the moment. Even then, her only thought was that Nathan would be an amazing father.

And he would. Of course he would. The look on his face when she told him who James is to her…it was as if he couldn't help but imagine a son of his own. As if, should James miraculously burst back into her life, Nathan wouldn't bat an eye before accepting him wholly and completely.

Audrey's not so sure she's good parent material, but she doesn't care. From the moment she heard that she loved the Colorado Kid, she has felt echoes of it in her heart (probably felt it before but didn't know what it was for). Since she learned that James is her son, she has felt the same intensity of ferocious emotion as Lucy felt for him in the Holloway House.

James is hers, her son, her child, and she wants to know him, to learn him, to fall in love with him practically as well as theoretically (though it's hard to imagine anything stronger than she already feels for him).

Her arms suddenly ache for someone (for her _son_), so abruptly that her hands stumble on the piano keys and produce a discordant sound.

Almost more than she wants to find a way to stay, she wants to find James. To make sure he's okay. To reassure herselves that he's more that just a corpse found on a beach. To get to know him.

To watch the look in Nathan's eyes when he stands before James, looks between Audrey and James, and makes some simple statement of fact that will release all her tension.

But that's just a dream. Anything she imagines, everything she wants…nothing more than a dream. A fantasy.

Two weeks left, and that's what keeps her away from her phone. It's what ensures she stays alone in her empty apartment all night long without ever once actually dialing that 1 on her phone.

Two weeks until the Hunter…dreams are all that are left to her.

And when she finally succumbs to exhaustion, collapsing into bed, that's what visit her.

Dreams.

* * *

Her red curls are carefully tamed, her white uniform pressed and neat (always best to make a good first impression) when she steps from the ship into Haven. Part of her wants to look around avidly, drink in all these new sights, this small seaside town with its quiet charms and hidden treasures. Sarah pushes that part of herself aside, though, refocusing all her attention on dear Stuart.

It doesn't take long to settle him in his (hopefully temporary) room at the hospital, and Sarah has only just begun to contemplate possibly having some time to herself to explore the town when she finds a man badgering Stuart with questions she doesn't quite catch.

Outrage sparks so quickly, flares so high (that temper of hers will get her into trouble one day, everyone's always warned her), that Sarah doesn't notice the tingle in her fingers until after she's dragged the tall stranger outside and let go of his ear. It's then that she also notices the clear blue of his wide eyes and the lean pureness of his form and the rumpled state of the hair he so self-consciously tried to straighten.

The man stares and stares at her (and she's thinking that he really_ could_ have twisted away from her earlier grip on him) and Sarah imagines more quiet charms and hidden treasures. The sea is in his eyes and the sand is there in the slight stubble on his jaw and all of Haven's secrets are bound up in his form.

Then he calls her incredible (her, the orphan with no past and little future outside the war; her, the nameless, faceless one of a hundred other nurses), so sincere it aches somewhere behind her breastbone, and Sarah forgives him every transgression (badgering Stuart, staring so shamelessly, being so compelling she nearly forgets all her duties, and even his later sins: leaving her alone but not quite as alone as he probably thought). In that instant, in some irrevocable, incomprehensible way, Haven becomes Nathan (or Nathan becomes Haven), so intertwined and connected that Sarah cannot see one without also seeing the other.

(He called her incredible and welcomed her to town, and she feels, finally, as if she has found a place she can belong. A place that will welcome her and treasure her and _want_ her.)

Warnings dance in Sarah's head as she checks that Stuart is resting and finds her suitcase long enough to change from her uniform to something a bit more feminine—and if Nathan (_Nathan_, the name is like a caress) stared when she was in her uniform, she almost cannot bear to think of what he'll do to see her all dolled up—but she ignores the warnings. She has a sense about people, one that's never failed her yet, and she is certain that she can trust this stranger who smiles at the sight of her as if he's never smiled before but has discovered the art of it just for her sake.

When she emerges from the hospital, he's still there, staring at something in the distance as he waits for her, hat in hand.

There's a sharp twinge that contracts through her heart, as if just his silhouette is enough to have her every cell straining for him. How lovely for her that she does not have to constrain herself in this instance.

A flirtatious smile rises to her lips as Sarah dances down the steps to meet him.

As if he can sense her nearness, Nathan turns to greet her, and yes, there, that look in his eyes that bleeds into his whole body (as if his cells yearn just as much for her), _that_ is why she is here, off to a secluded beach for a picnic with a stranger, accompanied only by the sound of waves gently lapping toward her, encouraging her closer, closer to Nathan, whose eyes never leave her.

They stopped to buy all the fixings of a picnic on the way over, so Sarah sits on a blanket he bought for her, full from a meal he chose for her (as if he instinctively knew all her favorite foods), all her (few) nerves smoothed away by the beer she added to his purchases despite knowing that she'll have to go back to the hospital. All that and somehow, even though it's the best date she's ever been on, it isn't quite _enough_.

Nathan doesn't talk much, just asks her about herself and listens so intently to her answers that it's as if he's drinking her in, his eyes wide in fascination.

Sarah has never felt so desirable. So beautiful. (So far removed from the battlefields that haunt her nightmares.)

Contrary to all those warnings she shrugged away, Nathan seems content just to talk. In fact, when she reaches out to run her fingers down his (a relatively innocent touch), his breath hitches in his throat and he seems to momentarily lose the question he wanted to ask.

A thrill sings through Sarah's blood like champagne bubbles, and if there was ever any chance that she was going to retract her hand and act as demure as a civilian who believes long life a guarantee, it vanishes then.

"You don't know anyone in Haven?" he asks, as if he can't believe it. She shakes her head, and keeps shaking it as he lists a few names. How could she possibly know anyone else when he is all she can see?

"You're my first friend," she says, and feels the truth of it in every one of her straining cells (her first friend in Haven; her first friend anywhere). No matter what happens here, he _is_ her friend, and he proves it by giving her the advice she thinks everyone should have engraved on their souls.

"You don't have to be afraid of what you don't understand," he tells her in a voice that shakes.

Her hand, without any conscious thought, has migrated from his fingers to his cheeks. His whole body shudders and shakes, earthquakes go off in his eyes, and Sarah would swear that he leans into the touch like a cat.

Not that he's the only one.

Out on the front lines, even embedded with the medical personnel, personal touches are few and far between. Sarah gives her patients the very best care, but that is far different than a man, strong and steadfast, looking at her lips with restrained but definite intention, so warm her whole body is tilting toward him as if he's the sun and she's caught in his orbit.

He's as enthralled as she, tethered to her touch as if they are opposing magnets, but for some reason, his eyes spark to life the most when she mentions that they have time.

Time. Not much of it, really, since she has to get back to Stuart for dinner and a walk, but time enough. Time for her to know exactly what she wants and to reach for it.

But.

"I am," he said when she called him her friend, half a question as if double-checking, half in affirmation as if vowing himself to her, such a strange dichotomy that Sarah is not even surprised that he leans closer toward her upturned lips but shakes his head and pulls back in the next heartbeat.

Muttering some halfhearted excuse, he gathers his hat and jacket as he stands to leave her.

Most likely, Sarah should not feel disappointed. Relieved, perhaps, recalled back to sanity (because despite what she's been intentionally leading Nathan to believe, this actually isn't the kind of thing she normally does). Or maybe even rejected, seeing as how he could not even bring himself to satisfy them both with a single kiss.

What she _isn't_ is surprised, though, because much as she hoped for today, Nathan's every move is ruled by restraint and control, so she has little actual chance of breaking down any resolve he chooses to hold to.

"Why do I always go for the shy ones?" she sighs to herself, dizzy with the sudden loss of Nathan beside her, adjusting her skirt and hair to keep herself from following him and _pulling_ him into a kiss.

But something sparks in him, some sudden resolve (or loss of resolve) that brings him up short, that turns his eyes from sea to sky, that has him kneeling and folding and unveiling everything he keeps so rigidly locked away, as if he needed only a second thought to assure him that this is what she chooses.

His hands are cooler than the sunbeams, more soothing than the lapping waves, his intention so clear that Sarah's lips curve in an elated smile.

And then he kisses her.

He kisses her and there is no going back from this.

* * *

Nathan comes to her only a few hours after she dragged herself away (and only thinking of poor Stuart made her able to leave Nathan's captivating touch and the beautiful smile he discovered just for her).

She should be angry that he's followed her to work, but she's delighted instead. Just the sight of him brings back a wealth of memories, of touches so sweet and tender, of kisses so light and mesmerizing she became addicted, of the light of awe and discovery in his eyes when she pulled him down on top of her.

"Nathan!" she says, mainly just to caress his name. "What are you doing here?"

And then he starts talking, more words than he's said to her all day, but they make so little sense that she doesn't know if she's staring at him in shock or in disbelief.

"You have the most intuition of anyone I've ever met," he says so certainly, so absolutely, that even if Sarah hadn't already known this about herself, she would have accepted it as fact simply because he said so.

And she trusts Nathan, has since he didn't even try to pull away from her grip on his ear, his hand just dancing there over her wrist, not touching or pulling or strong-arming her, and instead of reacting with anger or disgruntlement, he just smiled. Smiled as if she were the best thing he's ever encountered. Smiled the same smile he gave her when she tugged him from the beach to the car.

It's insane, on some level she knows that, this trust she has for him. He hands her a gun, sends her away from her post, all with only a kiss she steals herself as explanation (a kiss more desperate, harder and sloppier than the ones they shared on the beach).

But then, everything he said would happen does (though she's grateful, so grateful, that she doesn't end up having to flee Haven, because Haven is Nathan and Nathan is Haven and she doesn't _want_ to leave them).

There's blood on her hands and an unkempt man who first stares at her as if he knows her, then stares as if she's a stranger.

Sarah can't care about that, though, not right now. Not when it seems Nathan is telling her everything he can as quickly as possible…as if he's not going to be here for her.

"Why are you telling me all this now?" she asks, and he looks sad.

"Because you deserve to know. It shouldn't be hidden from you."

"But if you stay," she begins, and sees the answer written all over his face.

"I don't want to do this alone," she finally admits, caught somewhere between plaintive truth and coy temptation.

"Dave and Vince Teagues," Duke tells her, interrupting what must be her last few moments with Nathan (strange, to think that she has known him less than a day, but he has already touched so much of her life). "They'll help you."

"You help people," Nathan tells her, a last gift of purpose and assurance (he never said he loves her, she never told him she loves him, but it's there in these words, in his belief, in her hand on his and the last kiss she dropped to his lips). "This town needs you more than you'll ever know. It may not deserve you, but…it's who you are."

_He_ needs her. _He_ thinks he doesn't deserve her (and maybe he doesn't, who is she to know, but she would be there for him anyway, no matter what, if only he didn't have to get back to his own time).

Haven. Nathan. One and the same, somehow.

Sarah turns to Stuart, and talks to him, answers the pain in his eyes and the wound in his heart, shows him a picture of the future, and doesn't have to look over her shoulder to know that Nathan and Duke are gone.

* * *

It takes her mere moments to decide that she can never leave Haven behind again, an hour to gear up her courage to call Colonel Howard and ask to be assigned here permanently, and two days to bring herself to seek out the Teagues brothers. They're strange and eccentric, rooted in old ways of secrecy and denial, but they aren't used to female company either and that alone seems to sway them to her side to begin with.

Gradually, as the weeks pass, they become friends that she likes laughing with, that she can trust with the stories of all the strange wounds she sees at the hospital, the Troubles that bloom in the midst of people's deepest fears and sharpest wounds.

But they're not Nathan. Vince stares at her with his heart in his eyes sometimes, but…he's not Nathan.

She's alone here. Alone in a town that reminds her of Nathan every day, in the color of the skies and the sound of the waves and the smell of the woods and the words he left to echo in her ears.

_You don't have to be afraid of what you don't understand._

When she realizes that he did not leave her wholly alone…she clings to that piece of wisdom.

A baby. She's going to have his baby, and she's learned enough about her strange place in this town to know that she's not going to be around long enough to raise him.

She doesn't understand how this is possible. How on earth she could have met a man who isn't even born yet, won't be born for decades more, and have fallen for him so quickly that even now, hanging her head over the toilet every morning and terrified of every day…even now, she loves him.

"My son," she whispers on the beach where they had a picnic and he kissed her as if she took all his fear away and she kissed him back as if he was all that kept her alive and real (where the lapping waves drown out this truth and allow it to sink into her own heart, away from any and all eavesdroppers). "My son."

And she loves him (her son _and_ the man who gave him to her). She looks at the scene ahead of her (sky-gray and sea-blue and a voice that promised he was her friend, and somehow, she knows that he's with her, now, in the future, standing at her side, staring with just as much awe and devotion and faith as he did here) and she loves him with every beat of her heart.

* * *

Audrey wakes with tears drying on her cheeks and the vague memory of a dream where she had red hair and was dressed in white and stood on a beach. Wisps of remnants drift along her consciousness as she wipes her eyes dry. She thinks Nathan was there with her, and maybe James, and she'd shrug it off as nothing more than another nightmare (she has them so often now, Lucy on the beach standing over a body that's sometimes James and sometimes Nathan) except there's a tugging behind her breastbone, as if her cells are straining for something.

Desperately, Audrey reaches for the dreams, tries to recapture them, but they slip away.

(_Stop remembering_, Agent Howard said, and it seems she has no choice.)

Another night gone.

Twelve days left.

* * *

"Who is that?" Audrey demands.

There's a woman in her and Nathan's office, a woman standing in front of Nathan while he smooths a covering over the board displaying the Bolt Gun Killer case. Like a splinter of night displaced and left behind in the day, the woman's dark-haired and clothed all in black, hands encased in leather gloves—and she seems remarkably comfortable with Nathan, talking to him as if not noticing his arms folded tightly across his chest and his shoulders hunched downward.

"That?" Claire deftly avoids running into a girl and her dad as they head for the exit, maneuvering around a desk to join Audrey in peering into the office. "That's Jordan McKee."

Audrey's eyebrows raise high. "From the Guard?"

"Yeah." Something in Claire's tone distracts Audrey from her close study of this woman Nathan's mentioned a few times.

"Not a fan, I take it?" she asks.

Claire hesitates, then shrugs. "Let's just say she's had a very traumatic past and she doesn't mind taking it out on the world. Those gloves? She has to wear them. Her touch causes the most _excruciating_ pain I've ever felt in my life—and I've had appendicitis, okay?"

Already upset to see Jordan in _her_ office with _her_ partner, Audrey grows even more tense. Jordan's hands are hovering over Nathan's crossed arms, and even if he won't feel it, who knows what Jordan's Trouble might do to his nervous system.

Without giving Claire time to talk her out of it (or goad her into doing even more than she plans herself; it's hard to tell with Claire sometimes), Audrey heads into the office. It shouldn't feel like _she's_ the interloper, but somehow, when both Jordan and Nathan turn to her with nearly identical expressions of surprise, Audrey feels it anyway.

"What's going on?" she asks bluntly.

"Parker, this is Jordan," Nathan says after a moment where he just stares and then an instant where he shakes his head as if waking from a dream (or a nightmare). "Jordan, you know Audrey Parker."

"By reputation if nothing else." Jordan grants her a tight smile.

"Well, I've heard your name too." Audrey moves to her desk to lean back against the edge of it (it's petty, marking her place like this, but Audrey can't quite help herself).

"And have you heard about Grady? That watch on those bones you discovered? I gave that watch to Grady last Christmas, which means that there's no way he's the killer you're looking for."

"We're still waiting on an ID for that body," Nathan says.

"Listen to me," Jordan insists, "your killer is _not_ one of my people. You're on the wrong track. Besides, if you know Tommy's the killer, then it's entirely possible that ATM video was faked to frame Grady. To cast doubt on the Guard."

"How do you know about that video?"

Jordan lifts her chin, smug and silent. Behind her, Nathan manages to look both guilty and confused.

Feeling somewhat sucker-punched, Audrey scoffs. "I guess we're _not_ keeping the details of our investigation quiet anymore?"

"I'll take that as my cue to leave." Jordan looks entirely too self-satisfied—or else Audrey's just reading into it, but she doesn't think so; all modesty aside, she's usually good at reading people and she doesn't like Jordan.

(Of course, she might not like _anyone_ who comes so blatantly between her and Nathan.

For the first time, Audrey thinks maybe she understands a bit of why Nathan dislikes Duke and her relationship with him so much.)

"We'll talk later, Nathan," Jordan says before striding quickly away.

As soon as Audrey closes the door on the sight of her (rather more firmly than is probably necessary), she rounds on Nathan.

"Why would you show her the board? What would make you let all the details of our case out?" She throws up her hands. "You do realize that if Grady _is_ involved, she has all kinds of ways to get him off now, right? I mean, the whole time you were a reporter, you _never_ wrote about anything you shouldn't have, but _now_ you forget about confidentiality clauses?"

"Well," Nathan says, blinking rapidly, "now I can exercise my own discretion."

But, she notices, he sounds more unsure than she's ever heard him sound before.

"Okay." Audrey forces in a deep breath. "So what was your reasoning then? Why did you choose to use your discretion now, with _her_?"

Nathan's face tightens. "With _her_? A Troubled person who knows more about people's specific Troubles than we do? With inside information to people we might need to be on the lookout for? Who says she only wants to help the Troubled?"

"To the point of probably helping with that murderer's break-out a month ago, right? Yes, Nathan, I'm asking."

"Funny," Nathan bites out. "I don't remember asking you for _your_ reasoning on why _Duke_ knows all these classified details that are supposed to be kept confidential."

Audrey swallows hard.

It's not anger making him so curt and defensive.

It's hurt.

In a flash, Audrey remembers a hotel room and heat and falling. Remembers standing under a rain of hot water and vowing to fight for Nathan's sake. Remembers coming back to a corpse and feeling a truth wrenched from her and making a choice to lean against him. Remembers him vanishing right in front of her eyes and coming back to her and then running away from her confession about James Cogan.

All that…and then she spent the next two days with Duke, hashing and rehashing through his family journal and all the ways his family is bound up in her different iterations.

Two days when she has less than two weeks left. All that time alone on Duke's boat, and how did she miss what that would look like to anyone paying attention?

(She was afraid to see Nathan again after he ran from her, from the knowledge that the Colorado Kid is her son, but she should have been more afraid of what giving him space would look like.)

She's not even trying anymore, she thinks despairingly, and she's still hurting him.

"You're right," she says with a forced brightness. "If you say you trust her, then that's enough for me."

Needing to leave, to get out of there before her tears build and fall, she reaches for the doorknob.

Nathan's voice stops her.

"I don't," he says quickly. "I don't trust her, Parker. Not exactly. But…I do think she could be useful. And we only have ten days until the Hunter. I'll take any lead we've got no matter how small or how dangerous."

She doesn't know what to say, how to fix what she's purposely _and_ unwittingly caused. So in lieu of damaging words, Audrey moves to perch on his desk, right at his side, their arms brushing through their sleeves.

And here, finally, after so long, they reclaim it—that comfortable, companionable silence she's missed so much.

There's so much to say and so little time remaining to say them, but this is more important.

They sit there together and feel the tension drain slowly away (and the silence is broken only by the crash of a wall tumbling down at their feet).

* * *

Having reclaimed the ability to be silent with Nathan (no more reproaches screaming in the quiet between them), Audrey kind of just assumed they could slip right back into the easy confidence they used to share.

It doesn't take long to realize how wrong she is. Turns out, once something's broken, it's a whole lot harder to put it together again.

Stan bursts in with the news that Lucassi's identified the newest burned body they uncovered, and Audrey's chance (wrapped here in their comfortable cocoon) vanishes, subsumed beneath the case that has, in some ways, become the only way they can communicate.

"It's Tommy Bowen," Lucassi says without preamble when they arrive at the morgue. "Results came back right away because his dental records were in the employee files."

Nathan goes very still beside her. Carefully, Audrey shifts so that she's standing just a bit in front of him, her right shoulder leaned ever so slightly back against his left. "How long has he been dead?"

"Somewhere between five to eight weeks."

"But…eight weeks is longer than he worked for Haven PD," Nathan says, almost flatly, and Audrey's gut tightens.

"So…so what? When we first met Tommy, he was a cop from Brooklyn. But when he came back…that wasn't Tommy Bowen?"

"It was the Bolt Gun Killer," Nathan says for her.

"How is that possible?"

He casts her a dry look. "This is Haven, Parker. You have to ask?"

"It would explain why Roslyn was able to talk to me _after_ she was already dead." Audrey actually places a hand over her stomach, nausea roiling up like a riptide. "That…what I thought was…it was my kidnapper."

Shifting, Nathan presses a bit tighter against her, giving her a little extra support. "Remember the chameleon?"

"There's a native legend about skinwalkers," Lucassi says, so casual it's almost off-handed. Audrey can't help but stare back at the doctor, wishing she could read him. She used to be able to, a long time ago, when he still had hope of curing Alzheimer's. Now, with his hope gone, it's like a light inside him has been extinguished, snuffed out under a shallow layer of disillusionment.

Audrey wonders if, when Nathan looks at her, he sees that same layer of resignation slowly burying her.

"Skinwalkers." Nathan takes a deep breath. "Could be why the bodies are burned—to cover the fact that they've been skinned."

"The bolt gun would kill the victim without causing too much damage to the skins."

Audrey looks from Nathan to Lucassi and back again.

Nathan's face tightens at whatever he sees in her (maybe that light being extinguished right in front of him). "Parker," he says, but Audrey shakes her head, backs away, holds up a hand (such a small gesture, but Nathan treats her every touch so carefully that there could be no greater warning for him to let her go).

Audrey flees (she can't call it anything else). Ten days isn't nearly enough time to deal with a monstrous nightmare like this. Harry Nix is the closest monstrosity she can think of in comparison, but even his acts pale next to the Bolt Gun Killer striking her with his fists one moment, then pleading for help like an innocent the next. Pretending to be a friend to Nathan, then able to pull the trigger on him not just once, but twice. Picking and choosing parts from innocent people for who knows what reason.

Despite her best intentions, part of Audrey wants Nathan to follow her out into the hall.

He doesn't.

Most of her is glad, afraid she will push him away through sheer force of habit.

"Audrey? Hey, Audrey, you okay?"

Claire. She's there, at her side, reaching out to pat her shoulder in an awkward way that belies her usual confidence.

"Hey," she says, "is it more memories?"

"I wish," Audrey scoffs. And she finds herself wanting to tell Claire everything, spill out all her disgust and her fear and her rage. It's funny, to think back to not even two months ago, when Dwight insisted she talk to Claire and Audrey couldn't think of enough excuses to get out of it. Her first impression of Claire as too bright, too earnest, too _much_. As contrasted to now, where in the absence of Nathan, she's willingly made Claire into her confidante. To now, when she can look at Claire and see the darker threads of worry and fear and regret all tied up beneath her hard-earned professionalism that is its own form of armor and shield and comfort.

Nathan's right. This is Haven. Why does she even bother being surprised by all the twists and turns anymore?

"It's too much," she tells Claire. "Even if I had years, I don't think I could begin to try to fix everything that's wrong in Haven."

Claire regards her for a long moment. "Well," she finally says, "I'd say you've made a pretty good start."

"Maybe." Audrey lets out a mirthless laugh. "Sometimes I think that the only thing I've accomplished is just beginning to understand all the things that are broken."

"That's half the battle right there," Claire says a bit too brightly (a call-back to what Audrey used to think of her).

Audrey arches her eyebrows. "Well, now I _know_ things are bad. You only break out the clichés when you don't know what else to do."

"I'll figure something out," she promises, then smirks. "You just caught me on a bad day."

* * *

"Ten days," Audrey says. Nathan looks up from his paperwork, a strange look on his face.

"I'm sorry." She grimaces. "I know you probably don't need the reminder."

(But she wants to talk to him, wants to hear whatever assurance or dry statement or simple belief he'll give her. She needs it, just a bit of strength to get her through this day, through one-tenth of the days remaining to her.)

"It's all right." Nathan looks back down to his paperwork. "At least it's enough time for you to say your goodbyes."

The world quakes all around her. The eye in the center of the hurricane, Audrey is nonetheless shaken, staring at Nathan as if she's never seen him before. (She feels like she hasn't, like she's staring at a stranger.)

"What?"

"What?" He looks up at her blankly before suddenly frowning. "What?" he asks again, his voice filled with confusion.

"I thought you were convinced I wouldn't _have_ to leave." It feels wrong to be the one offering his usual assurances, fills her with a strange sense of self-consciousness, trying to direct him into giving her the comfort she wants.

"I am," he says with renewed confidence. He looks just as sure as ever, sounds just as unshakable as always…but for the first time, there's a fracture in the foundation of Audrey's world.

* * *

On her way to the station for yet another six or eight hours of staring at a bunch of clues that tell her only how much she _doesn't_ know, Audrey stumbles to a halt when she catches sight of Nathan. He's standing in the park down the street from the station, his badge gleaming like a slice of the sun on his belt, his shoulders stooped as per usual in public…and he's talking to a dark-haired woman dressed all in black, hands gloved. Whatever they're talking about (Audrey pointedly does not let herself think on possibilities), Nathan is so intent that he doesn't even step out of a girl's path.

Audrey _knows_ something's wrong when a couple pushing a stroller only a few feet from him don't even grab his attention.

Nathan _never_ ignores a baby.

"Jordan," Audrey says as soon as she half-speed walks, half-runs to reach them. "Any new leads on Grady's killer?"

Jordan looks from Nathan to Audrey and back again before shaping her mouth into a cold smirk. "I was about to ask you the same thing." She arches a brow. "But I guess you're just here for Nathan."

"We are partners." Audrey sounds much more defensive than she would wish (she was looking for her friend, but she'll take the partner; she'll take anything at this point).

"Joined at the hip," Jordan huffs, and she's all disdain and rolling eyes, but there's a satisfied tilt to her voice that Audrey doesn't care for. "Well, we'll talk later, Nathan."

Both Audrey and Nathan watch Jordan leave, though most of Audrey's focus is on what she can see of Nathan out of the corner of her eye.

"She tell you anything new about the Guard?" she asks. It's the only reason she can think of that Nathan would be meeting Jordan in the park (or rather, the only reason she's willing to consider).

Nathan blinks at her before his face grows guarded. "You don't think she'd be talking to me—that she'd _want_ to talk to me—for any other reason but information?"

A lurch in the pit of her stomach doesn't stop Audrey from asking, "Did _you_ want to talk to her for any reason but information?"

There's silence for so long that Audrey's heart contracts, a shiver of foreboding racing through her . But then Nathan shakes his head and looks away, small and hunched against the sunshine and chatter of nearby people.

"I still think the Guard have to know something about the cycle the chief talked about. And right now, Jordan's the only Guard-member who will talk to me."

"And what does she want in return?"

There's something very like disillusionment in his eyes, something like the beginnings of defeat in the set of his mouth. "Everyone always wants something—and no one will ever tell you what it is until it's too late."

He walks away. Just like that. As if it's that easy to leave her behind.

For a moment, out of habit, Audrey watches him go. But no, she thinks, she's not doing this anymore. She may only have nine days left, but she's going to make them all count.

"Wait, Nathan."

She hates how surprised he looks to see her coming after him.

"Oh, right." He gives a short shake of his head. "Did _you_ find something?"

Now that they know the Bolt Gun Killer is burning his or her victims, they've widened their search for any past victims that might have been overlooked. Audrey knows it's a smart move, though she'd much prefer _preventing_ any more murders than just cataloging his/her past crimes.

"No," she has to say, then pretends to boldness as she adds, "I just thought we could grab lunch or something.

He looks wary, skeptical, but also (to those who know how to read him) a bit hopeful. "Lunch?" he checks (waiting for that second invitation).

Her smile is wide and genuine and just a bit rusty. "Yeah. Lunch. You know, a meal that's supposed to come in the middle of the day, sometime between breakfast and dinner."

Staring, staring, that same expression on his face as when she promised to come back to Haven (to him) after speaking to Lucy Ripley. As if he thinks he's dreaming. As if he thinks he should know better than to hope but he wants to believe in it anyway.

In an impulse she purposely doesn't check, Audrey reaches out to wrap her fingers around his hand, the tips of her fingers resting against the center of his palm.

"I'm still here," she says (a hope rather than a lie, an intention rather than a promise). "I'm not going anywhere."

His eyes are locked on their joined hands as he says, "Well, for a little while more. You _will_ have to go eventually, though."

Her hand falls away from his. Blue skies, golden sunshine, the scent of lunch just around the corner…Audrey feels as if she's standing in the center of desolation, ground zero of some catastrophic event that kicks off the beginning of a dystopian novel.

Nathan blinks, blinks again, the aftershocks of her touch only slowly fading. "Parker?"

"What did you say?" she demands. "You think I _have_ to disappear now?"

"No!" But he shakes his head as soon as the denial falls between them, his hands clenched into fists. "But if the Troubles do disappear when you do…maybe it's for the best."

It's everything she's thought to herself, in the dark of night, alone in her apartment, awake and exhausted and counting down the hours and minutes. It's everything that's haunted her, the very thought that has made her willing to surrender and give up and let her time slip down the hourglass to oblivion.

But to hear it from him…for Nathan to say it so matter-of-factly… Audrey feels sick. The world is spinning all around her and there is no solid ground beneath her feet.

"You know what?" she says hoarsely. "I think, on second thought, I'll skip lunch today."

"Parker?"

Shaking her head (or maybe it's her whole body shaking), she backs away. "I…I never really thought you'd give up on me."

He looks stricken. "I haven't! Parker!"

Nathan. _Nathan_ believes that it's best for her to fade away. Nathan's given up. Audrey thought the sky would fall and the world would burn before he let her go. Apparently, she was wrong.

She should be glad, she thinks. Her plan worked. Everything she's done to make her eventual absence easier on him has finally paid off. It won't destroy him to see her vanish in the midst of a fiery meteor storm.

Only now, now that she doesn't have his strength to rely on, does Audrey realize just how much she was leaning on his faith. On him.

Nine days left.

Far, far too long.

* * *

Sitting at the bar, Audrey watches Duke pretend to work while he watches her in turn. As she sips her martini, Audrey can't help but be grimly amused by how many watchers there probably are in this bar, all of them stubbornly sticking to their ruses even though they're no longer necessary. Duke knows she's watching him, she knows he's watching her, while outside, she's aware the Guard are watching her, and are probably watched in their own turn by the Rev's followers, who are themselves watched by Dave and Vince—though if anyone's watching those two, they have Audrey's sympathy. She can't imagine ever actually being able to learn anything useful from the Teagues brothers (they are, she sometimes fancies, Haven's secrecy and elusiveness given tangible form and set loose on the town). Even working with them every day, Nathan couldn't—

Audrey's thoughts tumble to the same well-trod halt, undiluted by the two martinis she's downed in the vain hope that a bit of liquid softening will make it easier for sleep to find her (or at least, a bit of sleep free of images of a beach that holds a body and a beach that holds warmth and a picnic basket).

"Something funny?" Duke asks with a dubious look. There's a glass in his hands, though he's been drying it for so long that Audrey expects to see it disintegrate any moment.

"Not really." She shrugs, too tired to try to put any of her circular thoughts into words. Nine days left and time is too precious to waste on explanations that don't matter.

"You seem serious lately, even for you." Duke frowns, a bit more sincerely worried than he probably means to let slip. "We've still got time to figure this out, Audrey."

"Sure." She snorts. "More than a week. Plenty of time."

"Hey, come on. Defeatism isn't a good look on you."

"That's what Nathan used to think too." Surprised by her own bitterness, Audrey tilts her glass to stare at the counter through its bottom. "Guess _everything_ changes, not just my name and hair color."

Duke stops pretending to dry the glass, setting his cloth aside entirely in favor of leaning toward her over the bar. "What's that about Nathan?" As if feeling he's betrayed too much interest, he shrugs with purposeful casualness. "You know I can't resist any gossip that might embarrass him."

Sucking on the olive juice coating her toothpick, Audrey considers for a moment (but this _is_ why she brought it up in the first place, to get a second opinion from someone who's known Nathan longer, maybe knows him even better, than her).

"Have you noticed Nathan acting kind of strange lately?"

"Nathan? Nathan Wuornos? The _guy's_ strange in case you hadn't noticed."

"It's just…it's like he's given up." _On me_, she wants to add, but the words bottle up behind the memory of Duke's face when she fell into him in that far away hotel room.

Her glass rattles on the counter as Duke pushes himself upright with a snort. "Look, I don't pretend to know what all's going on between you two, but Nathan doesn't give up on people."

Belatedly, Audrey wishes she hadn't had that second drink. "Really? What about the chief then? Or Vince?"

"People give up on Nathan," Duke corrects her, his tone oddly gentle, "and Nathan doesn't deny that fact like most people would insist on doing. The chief, Vince, they stopped including Nathan in their plans a long time ago so Nathan just returned the favor. Doesn't mean he still wouldn't drop everything in a heartbeat if they needed him."

Audrey drops her eyes, her voice barely a whisper. "You?"

Silence as Duke swallows and stills. "Yeah," he says, "well, he's probably _told_ himself he's given up on me. I think we both know differently. Look—" He waves his hand through the air as if to sweep away the past few moments. But when he speaks, his voice is still achingly sincere, unusually intent. "Contrary to popular opinion, I'm not an idiot. I know what you've been trying to do for Nathan—but I also know it's not going to work. Nathan's been helping the same townspeople who've exiled him in all but name for years. You really think a few weeks of driving yourself to the office and keeping questionable company is enough to make him turn his back on _you_?"

"No." Her heart is beating too fast. Oddly enough, she can feel it strongest in her fingertips, hot and pressed against her damp glass. "But I think generations of history in Haven may be stronger than him."

"Audrey, Nathan would never let you go if he didn't think that's what you wanted."

And that's the truth. She knows it's the truth, can hear the unerring accuracy of it right through her skull, her bones, her heart. And yet…

"He all but told me to say my goodbyes." Audrey stares at Duke defiantly. "He said if the Troubles went with me, it'd be better for me to go."

There's a stretched silence for a moment, an eternity, that lets in the noise of the other patrons.

Finally, Duke picks up his cloth and glass and says, very casually, "Then maybe you've finally convinced him that leaving is what you really want."

Her skin is overheated, the _Gull_ is overly warm, Duke's eyes are burning into her.

Audrey feels chilled down to the very marrow of her bones.

* * *

Throwing herself back into the investigation, Audrey buries Nathan's betrayal (it's not a betrayal, really, not a knife in the back or two bullets to the chest, but it _feels_ like it) under reams of printouts—of every burned body found in the last twenty-seven years, of graphs and charts of possible motivations and plans—and really only succeeds in setting it aside when she finds a spike of electricity use in an abandoned factory that shouldn't be using any power at all.

There's no time to worry about what's between them before Audrey presses that worn 1 and waits for Nathan to answer. He's her partner, and even though it seems like she can't trust him right now, she _knows_ that he'll be there for her for this.

Except he doesn't answer.

She calls him again, again, again.

No answer.

He's avoiding her? Screening her calls?

Audrey stares at the computer with its suspicious address listed, that spike in the power readings since two days after she was kidnapped. Behind the computer, tacked onto the board she's stared at far too long, are pictures of all the victims. Bodies shot through the skull like criminals, burned like garbage.

She can't wait. Not for this. Not now.

(Eight days left.)

"Dwight?" Audrey taps on his office door, takes a deep breath when he looks up at her.

"What is it?"

"I think I may have found the Bolt Gun Killer's hideout," she says. "I want to check it out, but I'd rather have some backup."

Already rising, strapping on the bulletproof vest he never lets too far out of his sight, Dwight frowns. "Where's Nathan?"

Audrey pretends away her terror and shrugs. "I don't know."

Dwight hesitates, then nods. "Keep trying to reach him."

"But—"

"While we head over there," he finishes. "Come on, no time to waste."

* * *

Cold fury turns every second diamond-sharp, laser-focused, black and white absolutes. Each moment is clear as glass in her mind. She calls Nathan and listens to his recorded voicemail message play nine times on the way to the abandoned factory. The door on Dwight's truck sticks when she tries to push it open from the inside. The wind drifts a few leaves over the gray gravel as Audrey draws her gun. Dwight's a steady presence at her back, louder and heavier than Nathan, more assertive and upfront than Duke, but solid nonetheless and matching her step for step.

Simultaneously, Audrey has never wanted to open a door more and never wanted to turn aside more. She wants this over with; she is afraid of what it will mean if the Bolt Gun Killer is actually here. She is desperately afraid that she will never get the answers to all her burning questions; she is terrified of what those answers might be.

(She is afraid, above all, of something she refuses to face concerning chameleons and partners.)

Her chest is constricted by her too-tight bulletproof vest, her lungs contracted inward, oxygen hard to find. Her gun is heavy in her hand. Dust in the air, the scent of stinging chemicals, the bite of cold metal, all of it makes her nose itch. None of it is enough to shatter her focus.

Roslyn's voice, so scared and kind (so heartless and deceptive) echoes in her mind while her wrists burn with remembered pain and a long-healed bruise twinges on her cheek.

She remembers Tommy's laugh when he thought they were messing with him about stolen organs and his shock when he realized the Troubles were real. (She imagines how startled he was, how scared he might have been, when he was killed and burned and buried.)

The victims they've found, the ones they haven't, Grady and Tommy and Roslyn and women with pieces of their bodies taken like trophies.

And Nathan. Two gunshots like thunder and his tall, upright form tumbling, felled to lay vulnerable and still on the cold ground.

Nathan's face when she asked the Teagues if Lucy loved the Colorado Kid.

And James._ James_.

_You think you're the only one who loved the Colorado Kid?_

Audrey's blood boils as her finger tightens over the trigger. There's no way she'll let this killer, this _monster_, anywhere near her son (dead or alive).

But there's no one here.

The lights on, a tank still draining, spare skins left behind in a hurry (Tommy, Grady, more that Audrey's eyes skim over out of sheer self-preservation), but no Bolt Gun Killer.

"A skinwalker," Dwight says, his voice full of disgust he can't quite hide.

"The tank that's empty…" Audrey swallows heavily. "It's wearing a skin right now."

Dwight goes motionless. Cold. Quiet.

Audrey stares at the empty tank (her mind carefully, desperately blank).

"Audrey," Dwight says with forced calm. "Where exactly_ is_ Nathan?"


	7. Chapter 7

Unable to risk leaving the warehouse until they can either contain it or find out whose face the skinwalker is wearing, Audrey stays behind while Dwight heads out to round up the primary suspects.

"It's _not_ Nathan," she said over and over again, until Dwight had no choice but to say that they couldn't rule out anyone just yet.

"He wants you," Dwight said, "because he thinks you can lead him to the Colorado Kid. For now, we'll start questioning everyone that you trust. If we don't find the skinwalker there—"

"Which we won't," Audrey insisted.

"Then we'll start branching out."

Then, after making sure she was fine alone in the creepy warehouse with preserved human remains, he left her to find the others.

Her gun in one hand, Audrey holds her phone in the other and presses 1 over and over again, listening on a loop to Nathan's voice tell her to leave a message.

It's been almost three hours since she called him the first time.

He hasn't picked up once.

But then, she's not quite sure if they're really talking right now or not. Maybe he's just avoiding her. Maybe he's angry with her. Maybe he really has given up on her.

(Strange that these are now the best-case scenarios she can only hope for.)

* * *

They gather in a huddled, distrustful group between the grisly tanks, while outside, uniforms begin searching the surrounding grounds and cordoning off the crime scene. (Audrey is purposely deaf to Dwight instructing the cops to be on the lookout for Nathan.)

"A skinwalker," Dave says, sounding genuinely shaken (even if he's truly Dave, Audrey still doesn't trust the revealed emotion).

"So this killer could be anyone." Claire shudders and looks over her shoulder. "Why did we have to meet here?"

"Because one of the tanks is empty." Vince's shrewd eyes never leave Audrey. "And the skinwalker got away."

"So…what?" Claire sucks in a sharp breath. "You think it could be one of us?"

"This person seems to be interested in Audrey, or at least what Audrey might know about the Colorado Kid. That means he or she will have targeted the people Audrey trusts. A fellow kidnapped victim"—Audrey flinches from this description, though Dwight pretends not to notice—"a trusted coworker. They'll go after a friend next."

For the first time, Duke moves. He's been still, silent, observing everything, studying and cataloguing. Now, his face has settled into grim lines, his eyes cold and implacable.

"Someone Audrey trusts. A partner. A friend. Someone not acting like themselves." Duke catches Audrey's gaze, refuses to let her look away. "Someone want to tell me where Nathan is?"

And the last of Audrey's fragile denial shatters like glass.

* * *

Claire breezes through her interview and checks Audrey right back, her confidence restored now that they're far away from the tanks of skins.

Duke doesn't like having his identity questioned (or his motives, his past, his feelings; really, Duke just doesn't like being questioned in general), but he mentions Colorado and the kiss that Audrey wishes had never happened but can't quite regret. He's really Duke. Her smuggler with his heart of gold and his hands covered in blood only because of her.

As might have been predicted if Audrey could focus on anything but the moment just before her, Dave and Vince refuse to answer any questions. They claim that they would know if the other were not themselves and Audrey's inclined to agree. Besides, it'd be a tough act for someone to live up to the obtuseness and obliqueness of either Dave or Vince.

Dwight even submits to an interview, though she's not quite sure if it's because he really does think she confides in him enough for him to be a suspect or if he's doing it for motivational purposes, the good leader being a good example. Audrey doesn't know him well, but he talks about his daughter, about the Guard, and if he's the skinwalker, then he's been the skinwalker this whole time and that's impossible because the skinwalker was Tommy instead.

Eventually, there are no more interviews to conduct. (Except one.)

Audrey's blood screams in her veins. Her heart has lost its twinned beat and now plods along with no rhythm but terror.

"You know what this means," Claire says. As always, forcing Audrey to confront what she doesn't want to confront.

"You said he was acting strange," Duke says, leaned against the corner of the interrogation room. "We all know Nathan would never give up on you, Audrey. But if this skinwalker wants you to vanish in the meteor storm…well, that would explain it, wouldn't it?"

Audrey stares at Duke, wanting something from him (though she can't verbalize what, can't even think it). "We saved him, Duke. He died and we _saved_ him."

There's a split second of indecision in Duke's face before he's shaking his head, as grim as a criminal probably has to find ways to be. "We did save Nathan, Audrey. That Nathan. But this isn't him."

They all jump when Dwight charges into the room. "An officer caught sight of Nathan heading into the _Gun & Rose_."

"Is this skinwalker working with the Guard?" Duke demands, bristling and defensive. The tattoo, Audrey realizes. Nathan has it (or is it the skinwalker who has it now?) and that can only mean danger for Duke.

"We won't know unless we talk to him." Dwight meets Audrey's gaze. "How do you want to do this, Audrey?"

And there's no choice, really, is there? Nothing to do but hope that the next seven days pass in the blink of an eye.

* * *

She's almost reached the _Gun & Rose_ when her phone rings. Nathan's name is seared across the screen in mundane text.

Her heart thumps in her throat, in her fingertips, in the rush of blood through her ears. But her hands are steady as she answers the phone.

"Nathan? I've been trying to reach you."

"Parker, I need to talk to you." There's something rushed in his voice, something off-balance and stilted.

(Or maybe that's just her own dread speaking, making her think she recognizes the stranger, the opponent, in her partner, her friend, her ally.)

"Where are you?" she asks, though she's turned the corner and can see his Bronco parked up ahead.

"I'm at the_ Gun & Rose_. Parker, I…"

She can see him coming out of the diner. Striding toward the Bronco. Stopping to stare as she pulls up just beside his vehicle.

"I think something's wrong," he says, then the click of the dial tone thrums against her ear.

Audrey gets out of her car and comes face to face with Nathan.

"Parker," he says, as if he can't see the blankness devouring her from the inside out (as if he cannot read her at all), "have you noticed anything strange lately?"

"Strange? What do you mean?"

Over his shoulder, she can see Dwight parking outside the diner's lot, Duke swinging out of the truck, another car with Stan and Colin creeping forward.

Nathan shakes his head. Audrey's struck by the realization that his hands are trembling. She's never seen him look so unsure. So shaken.

So not himself.

"I don't understand," he's saying. "If it were a Trouble, I wouldn't notice. Right? But you would."

"Nathan," she says, suddenly desperate, choking on panic and grief and denial all bubbling up inside her like bile. "Where have you been? Why didn't you answer your phone?"

He squints at her. "I think something's wrong, Parker. I couldn't…I didn't want to risk being near you if I was compromised."

Everything seems suddenly very muffled and distant. Everything except his sea-blue eyes, locked on her to the exclusion of all else.

"What do you mean?" she asks. "Compromised how?"

And Dwight's there, his hands clamping over Nathan's shoulders, grabbing his arms, handcuffing his wrists behind his back while Duke snatches his coat and holds him still when he struggles. Stan's out of the squad car, his hand on the butt of his gun even though she can tell how confused he is by what's happening.

"Parker!" Nathan fights for only a moment before he sags to a halt. He doesn't look at Dwight or Duke, doesn't stare at the police surrounding him. Instead, he looks straight at her, and she cannot read whatever expression he holds.

"Nathan," she says, and she wants to scream, she wants to rage. She wants to shove Dwight and Duke away from Nathan and soothe the ache of the cuffs he cannot feel. She wants to draw her gun and shoot this monster who would dare take her partner, her friend, her _everything_ away from her.

Instead, she does nothing. Just stares as Dwight leads him away. Stares as Duke tries to talk to her, his words all swirling together in a haze somewhere far above her.

Stares as she wonders just when her partner died, and what she was doing when it happened, and why she wasn't there to save him.

(For the last time, for the most important time, she fails. She failed. All her failures have led her to this one, and for all that she has clung to the identity of Audrey Parker, this is the first time that she realizes Audrey Parker does not deserve to be saved.)

* * *

Red welts ring Nathan's wrists where ropes bind them behind his back. Audrey can't stop staring at the raw marks, her fingers wrapped around her own wrist to hide the scars where glass sliced through rope and flesh alike (and all so she could get to Nathan, but for what, why did she bother at all, what's the point of any of it if they were just going to end up here, her standing over a monster in the form of her partner and Nathan dead in an unmarked grave?).

She remembers wishing for Nathan's Trouble, then, in that basement, for his presence, his steadiness, the force he carries with him hidden beneath his careful facade, like the tidal surges rolling under the surface of a seemingly placid ocean.

Now he is the one who's bound. Tied to a chair in a room of the abandoned factory while, outside, police and coroners dig up bodies from the Bolt Gun Killer's graveyard (do they dig up _Nathan's_ charred corpse even now?).

Audrey doesn't appreciate the irony. In fact, every cell in her body is locked in battle with itself in some form of tantric denial. She _yearns_ to rush forward and unwrap the bindings from him, to soothe the painful marks by touching him elsewhere, giving him something better to focus on. She longs to free her partner (as he freed her) and stand at her ally's side (as he's stood by her) and hug her friend (as they hugged, so close, so tenderly, when he came for her).

But.

But this_ isn't_ Nathan (maybe). He's her kidnapper, a murderer, a skinwalker, a monster (or is he?). The Bolt Gun Killer is the one sitting in front of her, responsible for what looks, from the reports she's been getting from the teams outside, to be _at least_ a couple dozen deaths.

And he killed Nathan.

He/she came up to her partner, probably wearing a familiar face, and shot him through the back of his skull (through the chest) with a bolt gun (with a standard-issue sidearm) and silenced him (left him behind like garbage left to rot on the ground) and used his face to destroy Audrey (twice-over).

It _can't_ be true. It _isn't_ (because if it is, then there is nothing left of Audrey even without a meteor storm's calamitous fall).

All this time, all these months in Haven, all the secrets and mysteries, Audrey thought the worst thing was doubting herself, not knowing who she really is, _what_ she really is. But this...doubting _Nathan_, wondering if it's really him...if he's gone... This is infinitely worse.

An added benefit to standing behind Nathan is that he can't see her (can't see the torn nature of her thoughts; cannot see that it is she who betrayed him into those rough ropes).

Not that it matters.

Nathan's head lifts, turns, his eyes searching. "Parker?" he asks. When she says nothing, he adds, "I can smell you. I know you're here."

"So?" Dwight asks coldly. "You think pretending you have heightened senses will convince us? You could just be guessing. Or maybe you get a bit of whoever's skin you steal. It doesn't prove anything."

"A skinwalker is different from a chameleon," Nathan says, very calmly. Too calmly. "They don't get any memories from their victims or else why wouldn't he have taken Audrey's skin to get the information he wants from her?"

"That's a good point," Audrey says despite herself.

"Parker!" There's a bit too much relief in his voice for Audrey to be entirely comfortable. (Skinwalker or not, she has never felt so traitorous. So untrustworthy. So underserving of his unswerving belief.)

Her skin prickling from the force of Dwight's silent disapproval, Audrey steps in front of Nathan.

"Audrey." How can the skinwalker so perfectly replicate that note of awe? That shade of reverence? That depth of faith? "Help me," he begs. "Help me prove that I'm not the skinwalker. Ask me anything."

It's too much, the weight of his gaze, the burden of his trust (the nightmare that might be lurking behind those familiar eyes).

"Where's Duke?" she asks Dwight. "He's known Nathan the longest."

"Outside," Dwight answers just as Nathan says, "_You_ know me better than anyone, Parker."

Inexplicably, Audrey feels abandoned. Duke was so adamant that they had to apprehend Nathan, so firm in his conviction that Nathan must be dead, that the skinwalker would target him first. Yet as soon as they had Nathan, as soon as Nathan glared at Duke with that tattoo stark on his arm, Duke vanished.

She needs him right now.

Or, no. No, actually it isn't Duke she needs. It's Nathan she needs, needs with a desperation bordering on panic.

"Audrey," Dwight warns, but she turns on him.

"We gave everyone else the chance to prove they were who they seemed. We can't just take it for fact that Nathan's..."

Dwight narrows his eyes consideringly before giving a grudging nod. "Fine, question him, but don't let wishful thinking blind you to the truth. This skinwalker knows how to be convincing, how to prey on our vulnerabilities."

"I know. Just...give me a few minutes with him."

When the door, half off its hinges, is wedged shut, Audrey gathers herself enough to face Nathan (or the person who _might_ be Nathan).

"Why are we here?" he asks. It's not the first question she expected out of him, and it makes her hackles rise.

"Why?"

"I just..." He looks away. "I wondered if maybe it was something else. Something strange enough to keep you out of the station."

"Just in case you're _not_ the skinwalker, we didn't want to tip off whoever _is_ that we suspect someone else. Parading you around handcuffed in front of the entire department would definitely tip him or her off."

"I think it's a woman."

Audrey narrows her eyes. "You're just saying that so I don't suspect _you_ as much."

It's a burst of normality when he rolls his eyes. "After Grady and Tommy? No. But think about it-the bodies she buried, the ones she didn't bother burning, they're all female. Every piece she's...taken...is a different one, like she's collecting specific features."

"You think she's building her own body? Why?"

His shrug is stilted due to his bound hands, but still eloquent. "Maybe she lost her original body a long time ago. Maybe she needs a specific face to get something she wants."

It's addictive, reasoning out a case like this with him, putting clues together and listening for the leap of intuition that gives them a direction to look. But it's also misleading, distracting (_painful_), and her intuition is silent (cowed, intimidated, afraid that it is only the wishful thinking Dwight warned against).

"How do I know you're not just saying all of this to get me looking to someone else?"

Nathan regards her for a long moment, his gaze so steady that Audrey almost steps back from the force of it. "The first time I felt your touch," he begins, making Audrey's heart hammer against her breastbone, "it was at the station. You'd called me, the way only you ever did, needing help and not doubting for a moment that I would give it. _Could_ give it. But then I heard a gunshot and the call was broken. I was so afraid that you were dead, that you'd called me fore help and died before I even had a chance to tell you that I was coming."

His arms flex against the restraints (an unconscious gesture that has Audrey locking her muscles so she doesn't leap forward to free him).

"But you were alive, just waiting for me, and you weren't surprised to see me. As if you never even considered that I wouldn't come.

"You hugged me."

Audrey swallows. The air is close, warm, shrinking so that she feels closer to Nathan, so close that her hand actually hovers in the space between them, as if instinctively moving to recreate that first touch.

"And when you put your hand on my neck...that was the first touch I'd felt in years."

Once, Audrey had looked at Nathan and, instead of his customary openness, seen secrets.

_How did you know the chameleon was me?_ she'd asked him, but he'd evaded the question and when she'd looked up at him, she'd seen something veiled and shrouded. Not because he was intentionally keeping it from her, she realized later. Not even because he wasn't sure they were ready for it.

But because, she thought, he hadn't recognized the secret himself, hadn't allowed himself to look beyond the veil to what was being built beneath, the foundation that kept them both unable to just cut their losses and walk away no matter how hard and painful things became.

Since then, she's seen that secret grow, the veil thinning, becoming more and more diaphanous until it finally ripped at the seams when they embraced with an address pressed from his hand to hers, or maybe the embrace after her kidnapping, or when she kissed him, or maybe even later, when he lay dead beneath her and the future was empty.

Now, listening to his raw confession, there is no more veil, no more secrets, nothing but pulsing honesty, naked sincerity. This is more than proof; it is confession and admission and statement of fact all rolled into one.

It is Nathan's heart-not riddled with bullets or stripped of its fleshly skin or burnt to char-but whole and alive and beautiful.

This _is_ Nathan.

"Nathan," she says through a dry throat and a heart wrung weak with relief. "What did you mean, earlier, when you said something was wrong?"

His slow, small (but bright for him, wide and real and warm) smile is enough to crush the last of her doubts.

* * *

"Go home, Parker," Nathan tells her. "Get some rest."

It makes every bone in her body groan in protest (or maybe that's the hard folding chair someone scrounged up for her after she refused to leave Nathan's side), but Dwight seconds the suggestion and Audrey figures she's already tested the police chief's patience enough for one day. Maybe giving him some time with Nathan will finally convince him that there's no point in keeping him locked up here.

Still, even though she leaves (though not before brushing a hand down Nathan's arm and finding more proof of his realness in the depth of his reaction to that small touch), Audrey's mind raced with ways to prove to Dwight that the skinwalker is still out there. All the way back to her apartment, she thinks of arguments to use against Dwight's unexpected stubbornness.

He's scared, she gets it, and probably overwhelmed at the thought of tracking down a skinwalker who can be _anyone_, but that's no excuse for taking it out on Nathan.

"If it's really him," Dwight had said with finality, "staying here overnight won't hurt him."

She _hates_ that, hates that it's the way everyone in this backward town seems to think, that it's the way Nathan himself thinks-that just because his nervous system doesn't communicate, no mark or wound or betrayal or emotional ostracism affects him at all. That it doesn't matter.

It matters. It matters enough that rage at the injustice screams inside her, keeping her from sleep more surely than the swirling, fractured dreams of beaches.

It's late and Audrey still hasn't thought of a calm, rational way to break through Dwight's set defensiveness when her phone rings. At the sight of Duke's name, Audrey almost doesn't pick up. In the end, consciously recalling all the times he's been there for her, she answers the phone.

"Duke, where have you been?"

"Audrey, I know, but listen, that's Nathan, all right? Not the skinwalker-it's Nathan."

"I know," she says, "but how do _you_ know? You just disappeared, I didn't even know where you were."

"When we grabbed him..." Duke makes a strange sound. "Whatever, the point is, I was pretty sure it was really Nathan then. So, don't ask me how, but I tracked his movements across a few traffic cam videos."

"Traffic cameras?"

"And maybe a few minutes-hours, whatever-from the station security cameras. Let's let that go, though, in favor of me repeating, that's _Nathan_. Despite him being a bit cozier with some scary tattooed woman than I might prefer considering my eventual fate, the guy's pretty boring. Trust me, I have video proof of it-some might even call him unnaturally driven, and he spends practically all his time at the station, including nights, so it really wasn't that hard. And, Audrey, going all the way back to not-Tommy's dramatically fiery exit, there's just not enough time when he's off-camera for Nathan to have been killed-not unless the skinwalker could carry his body out in front of the entire station. Trust me, Audrey-"

"I already know," Audrey finally succeeds in saying past Duke's hurried spiel. "He knew things, Duke, things only Nathan would know. But Dwight won't believe us. He claims we don't know that the skinwalker doesn't get memories from her victims the way the chameleon did."

"Really." Duke's voice is so flat that Audrey can't help but smile. Warmth floods her, so rich and welcome that she remembers how easy and quick it was to fall against his loyal heat. "And the fact that Tommy didn't know squat about police procedure?"

"Apparently not enough evidence. But, Duke-thank you. I don't even care how many crimes you committed today to get this. Thank you."

"Yeah. Well, let's just maybe not tell Nathan that I spent all day watching his-incredibly _boring-_-life." A tickle of humor shades his voice more familiar. "I want to drop that little tidbit on him at the perfect moment. Preferably with a camera and an easily accessed exit nearby."

Audrey laughs, but doesn't let him distract him. "Duke, how did _you_ know? What tipped you off?"

A long pause ensues, broken only when Duke finally clears his throat. "When we grabbed him...he called you Parker."

"Right." Her brow furrows. "But it's not a secret that he calls me that." (Though, she thinks, it is a mystery as to _why_ he does.)

"It was the way he said it. Look, I don't really want to go into all the details, but when you were...missing...well, let's face it: Nathan went a bit off the deep end. But the way he called your name when we went to that inn the first time and he thought you were there. I don't know. He said your name the same way today. I don't think the skinwalker could fake that."

Rubbing her hand over her forehead, Audrey is at a loss for words. She doesn't know what to think, exactly, what to say now that the truth hangs in the air between her and Duke.

"Thanks," she finally repeats, and despite the awkwardness, she hopes Duke realizes just how much she means it (for knowing Nathan, for wanting to save him; for recognizing this truth and being a good enough friend not to bring up what's also passed between_ them_ occasionally).

"I'll finish copying these videos into an easy-to-decipher format for Sasquatch, then head down to the station."

"They're keeping him at the factory." Audrey closes her eyes against the image of Nathan only a few walls and askew doors away from death and murder. For all his blase attitude about literally saving her life, Nathan was so innocent when they first met, so alone and so used to it, so _safe_. Now he is surrounded on every side by plots and secrets and danger (because of her).

"With the skins?" Duke asks incredulously. "I'll hurry, then."

"Call me when you're headed over and I'll meet you there. Maybe Dwight will have a harder time saying no to a united front."

"We can hope."

Her apartment isn't quite so lonely after that, and cradled in the arms of tentative hope and warm relief, Audrey finally slips into sleep.

* * *

When she wakes to a bright beam of sunlight piercing her eyes, she stares down at her phone. After eight o'clock and no missed calls from Duke or Dwight.

"Really?" she mutters. "How long does it take to copy some videos?"

She rushes to get ready (rushes to get back to Nathan before he can start thinking that she's forgotten him), doesn't bother looking around as she gets into her car, pays more attention to dialing Duke than to the traffic around her.

"Come on, Duke, pick up."

But he doesn't, and looking up to the road, Audrey has to slam on her brakes to keep from rear-ending a car stopped at an intersection.

Honking her horn does nothing. Redialing Duke gets her nothing. Nothing she does is able to get anyone's attention because they've all gone (shut off and shut down like she will be in so few days).

The driver's unconscious, as are the occupants of the next stalled car, and the next, and the next, and the joggers lying on the sidewalk.

Six days until the Hunter meteor storm, and she never imagined everyone else would disappear before her.

* * *

Haven is a ghost town populated by comatose bodies and her, a spirit left behind to haunt the places of her old life (lives). The silence is eerie, frightening, so unsettling that she almost, _almost,_ wishes for _Silent Night_ to start playing over Troubled skies.

For a bit, as she drives over lawns and across parks to get to the factory where Nathan's locked up, Audrey imagines this vista as the landscape of her strange emotional existence-landmarks with no more meaning, bodies of faceless strangers who used to mean something transformed only into obstacles to get around as she struggles for answers.

"Nathan? Nathan!"

She knows it's useless, that Nathan is as susceptible to the Troubles as everyone else (_If it were a Trouble, I wouldn't notice. Right?_), but she calls his name anyway, hungry to hear him call back (_Parker_, the way he always does, so distinctive it bypasses even Duke's healthy suspicion and natural skepticism). Grunting as she pushes aside the heavy door, Audrey freezes on the threshold.

The room is empty. No one's there. The chair they'd forced him into is tipped over, rest-stained ropes cut straight through and left coiled on the floor. Dwight sits in the hallway outside, propped up against the wall, as unresponsive as everyone else, no signs of a struggle evident anywhere.

Panic surges fast and hot inside her like copper in her mouth, tainting the back of her throat.

Doing her best to remain calm (to just _breathe_), Audrey searches every inch of the creepy factory, heads outside and combs the surrounding area, eyes skipping over the covered forms she examined the day before so she could report on their progress to Nathan.

Nothing.

Time becomes meaningless, then, a stretch of unnumbered eternities, flashes of clarity, the sight of a dog also sleeping, stretched out beside it's fallen owner, the leash slack between. The sight of two men in a car, both sporting Guard tattoos and pointed in the factory's direction, binoculars and empty coffee cups like neon signs to explain their presence (strange, though, because Nathan said they were watching _her_ and she hadn't been at the factory). Duke on the dock headed toward his Land Rover-a pang slices through her chest when she notices the phone in his hand, as if he were felled just as he intended to call her in as his reinforcements.

(But she slept through it all.)

And the man, missing a shoe, painfully innocent-seeming-and awake.

Will Brady, a suspect, a victim, Troubled, and with a sense of humor she'd ordinarily click with right away. Only, right now, there's a dying town, a ticking clock, a puffin earring, a few more clues as to just how long the Bolt Gun Killer has been in Haven, selecting victims based on physical attributes, killing in the shadows, leaving the wounded and the bereaved behind. All that, and Audrey can't focus anyway, not past the fact that Nathan's missing.

Later, she will wonder at the pointedness of Will's Trouble, the irony of meeting a man who can only save the town by sacrificing himself to fate's mercies. Later, when she's heard the name of _the Barn_, and felt an ominous foreboding steal through her, sluggish and deadening, Audrey will remember both that Will was willing to fight and yet was also ready to sacrifice himself.

"I suck at goodbyes," she admits when he's laying himself down on an altar shaped like a stretcher, and she feels like so much of the last couple months can be summed up in that simple statement.

Later, she will hope that Will Brady gets his own return, sooner than hers and with name and memories (and hair color) intact.

But at the time, in between suspicion and distrust and empathy, all Audrey can really think on is that that she stumbled over Nathan in the_ Gun & Rose_ diner, slumped across a table with his arm outstretched.

She didn't even mean to go there, almost hadn't bothered to take the time to follow up on that nagging feeling of having missed something that began when she'd noticed the Guard-members surveilling the factory rather than her apartment. They hadn't been scouts; they'd been the rear guard.

It was just a hunch that had led Audrey-and a protesting Will-into the diner, but here was Nathan, alive but still a prisoner, still distrusted and ostracized (and maybe his fate is as fixed as hers, as Will Brady's). Placing a stolen jacket under Nathan's head as a cushion, moving his hand down to his side so he wouldn't lose all circulation, Audrey gazed around at the deceptively ordinary, startlingly strange tableau.

Nathan at the table, Jordan unconscious just behind him (Audrey moves her splayed hand just a bit away from Nathan, in case she jerks forward when they all wake), no other Guard nearby...and a little girl sitting across the table from Nathan.

"I've seen this girl before," Audrey realizes. "At the station when Nathan was talking to Jordan about our case, and again in the park...when he was with Jordan."

_I think something's wrong, Parker_, he'd said. _If it were a Trouble, I wouldn't realize it._

And Dwight, telling her that the Guard use the Troubles of those they save-and the little girl slouched, tiny and fragile, in her chair, wan and tired, tearmarks crusted over her cheeks.

"They were using him." Audrey doesn't even recognize her own voice. "Controlling him somehow."

"What?" Will asks, but Audrey can't look away from Nathan.

"Don't worry," she murmurs (despite herself, just the slightest bit disappointed when he doesn't wake at her hand on his brow). "Don't worry, Nathan. I'm going to fix this."

* * *

With the help of Will, a couple purloined wheelchairs, and more muscle strength than is Audrey's norm, she manages to move the bodies-Jordan to a cell, the little girl to Dwight's office, adn Nathan to his desk in their office (the fourth person to the interrogation room).

Then time runs out (for Will, now, but soon for her), and she gives her lame goodbye to him, heads to the hospital to do what she can to save him in case a better tomorrow ever comes. The town is awake around her, sounds of life and movement (and plenty of complaints about the gas leaks rife through this coastal town), the streets clearing, Havenites picking themselves up and choosing not to ask to many questions in favor of just going on about their business as if they haven't all lost half a day (half a day, when Audrey would give nearly anything for an extra half day).

Hoping that Dwight's still assessing things out at the factory, Audrey rushes back to the station. Despite a glance thrown to her office where she left a note in front of Nathan telling him to wait there, she heads to Dwight's office instead.

"Who are you? Where am I?" The girl draws herself up to her full height, a cold mask drawn over her features. "Let me go right now."

"I'm Audrey, and we're at the police station. What's your name?"

The girl blinks at her, astonished. "Let me go," she repeats, command slathered over her voice.

"Whatever you're trying right now," Audrey raises her eyebrows at her, "it's not going to work on me. Now, what's your name?"

Deflating like an old balloon, the girl blinks quickly. Whispers, "Ginger. I didn't want to do it, really, but they said they'd help me find my dad if I just did what they asked me to. I wasn't hurting anyone!"

Audrey takes a deep breath (swallows back all the hurt she's felt in the last week, the terror and the despair; tries not to think of Nathan's face when Dwight and Duke wrestled him into submission, what Dwight might have decided to do to him thinking he was already dead) and kneels in front of the girl. "All right, I know this is probably hard to understand, but the Guard-the people who made you do this-they were using you. It's what they do: find people with abilities and manipulate them. You said they promised to look for your dad?" Audrey takes out her phone and pulls up the photo she'd taken in the kitchen of the _Gun & Rose_. "Is this your dad?"

Ginger's recognition is instant and all-consuming. She throws herself at Audrey, lashing out with tiny fists and sharp-toed shoes. "Where is he? Why is he tied up? Let him go! Take me to him! Do what I say!"

"That won't work on me," Audrey warns her again, catching her fists in a hold as gentle as she can make it. "I'm not the one who tied him up. That woman you were with, Jordan McKee, she's the one who was keeping him from you. It's how they make you do what they want."

"But they said they were helping me. I told them to tell the truth and they said that everything they were doing was to _help_ me."

"Maybe they believed it. If a person believes something, they can make it their truth-and not even your ability can make someone stop lying to themselves."

"But they said my dad was afraid of me. That he ran to get away from me."

"They lied." Audrey tries to soften her tone, tries to push past urgency to some measure of empathy (tries to see a little girl rather than a tool used as a weapon against Nathan). "I moved your dad here at the same time as I brought you here. Now..." Audrey pauses but cannot find it in herself to let any qualms stop her. "I can show you to your dad right now if that's what you want. He's safe in a different room here in the station; no one else knows he's here. Or..." She locks eyes with Ginger. "Or you can get some answers from Jordan-help me figure out why she needed you so much she was willing to kidnap both of you."

Ginger studies her a long moment, the look on her face so much older than the rest of her (her eyes so hard, so grim, that if Audrey weren't immune to the Troubles, she thinks this girl would be terrifying). "That man," she finally says, "Nathan, the one she made me talk to."

"My partner," Audrey says with a nod. "I know you don't have much reason to trust me or want to help me, but I just want to find out_ why_ they wanted to control him. What they used him for."

"All they made me make him do was tell Jordan everything she wanted to know, and also to say something about leaving whenever his partner-you-mentioned some sort of deadline."

Fury is cold. It is sharp. It burns in her bloodstream like bubbles in champagne but so much more potent, transforming her blood much more quickly, more powerfully, than alcohol ever has.

"Yeah," she says, "well, those are things Nathan wouldn't ordinarily do or say, and as a cop, him acting so strange puts him in a lot of danger."

"He was nice to me," Ginger admits quietly. "The first time he saw me, he asked if I needed help. He said he could get me away from the lady with black gloves."

"But you didn't ask him for help."

Ginger looks up at her. "No. I didn't think he'd be able to find my dad."

"Well, now Nathan's the one who needs saving from the lady in black gloves. Will you help me do that?"

"All right," Ginger decides. "I'll help you-just because I want to ask Jordan why she didn't tell me that my dad hadn't run away. But after she tells us, after we get what we need, I want to see my dad right away."

Audrey nods. "I promise."

"And ice cream," Ginger adds, a quick reminder that for all her poise and command, she is still just a little girl. "If I help you, I want some ice cream."

* * *

Nathan turns to face her from where he watched her come through the window. She thinks this is one of her favorite views: Nathan before a backdrop of their office, framed in rich browns and sleek reds, fitting so easily into the world she was used to walking alone before arriving in Haven. There is a current of energy buzzing about him, but he stands patiently, something very soft in his eyes. Her note dangles from his right hand.

"Nathan," she says on a sigh of relief (everything that matters in her world sliding back into place).

"Another day in Haven, I'm assuming?"

"Will Brady, a man in a coma-when he woke up, everyone else got put into his coma. When he chose to go back in, everyone else woke up."

His nod is short, almost perfunctory, but still he takes the time to smile at her and say, "Glad you didn't decide to take the day off then."

She can't help it anymore. Audrey steps forward (close, closer, but not too close), reaches out tentatively (hoping, _praying_, that he won't flinch away this time), and when he remains perfectly still, she curls her fingers around his hand and into his palm.

After the slight jolt, the flutter, the stillness that is him processing the sensation, Nathan's fingers curl around hers.

"I'm sorry," she whispers. This close, she can smell maple syrup and ink and pine, a scent so familiar, so evocative, that Audrey actually sways toward him.

"You saved us," he says, his gaze fixed as steadily as always on her (and how can she possibly disappear when just his gaze on her is enough to lock her so solidly in place?). "What's there to be sorry about?"

"For believing even for a second that you were the skinwalker. For letting them take you and do_ this_ to you." Her thumb swipes over (not quite touching, because she wants to make the world come alive for him, not make his world solely pain) the red marks on his wrists.

"Audrey," Nathan says wryly, "I suspected you of being the chameleon and actually went so far as to shoot the thing _while_ it was wearing your face. Let's just say we're even now."

"I'm glad," she says, suddenly very fierce. "I know this sounds stupid to say, but I want you to know that I'm _glad_ you're safe. That the skinwalker didn't take you."

His lips twitch. "Me too. But, Parker," he's suddenly more business-like, drawing upright and steeling himself (though, promisingly, he does not pull his hand free of hers). "Jordan came for me. I...I don't know how she got me to come with her or why Dwight let us go, but she took me to the-"

"The _Gun & Rose_, I know." With a final squeeze to cement the touch in her memory, Audrey reluctantly drops his hand. "I found you there with her and some of the Guard. And a girl."

"A girl?" Nathan's brow furrows, as if the memory of Ginger is dancing just outside his reach.

"A girl who can make you do whatever she says."

As realization narrows his eyes, as anger broadens his shoulders, Audrey pulls the door open to reveal Ginger waiting for her outside.

"So," she says, "do you want to ask Jordan some questions?"

* * *

It's funny (in a totally _un_funny way) how just as Haven takes ordinary people and turns them dangerous, it also takes everyday words and adds sinister connotations and terrifying undertones.

Troubles.

The Hunter.

Colorado Kid.

The Barn.

A little over five days left and she finally knows where she disappears to.

A barn. _The_ Barn. A building that no one knows anything about but that apparently promises salvation, help on a scale even she can't offer no matter how much she tries.

"When Audrey goes into the Barn," Jordan said through clenched teeth and zealous fanaticism, "the Troubles _disappear_ in Haven for twenty-seven _years_."

Audrey had stood there in shock, in sudden paralyzing indecision (because this, _this_, is why she has always walked into that Barn, Sarah and Lucy and the others, to give haven to all God's orphans; that's worth her memories, her life, her very identity...isn't it?). Nathan was the one who'd bristled, all fury and righteous indignation (and betrayal, threaded through his entire body, evident in the muscles corded up over his arms, under that tattoo under his elbow that matches Jordan's). "Why control me?" he demanded. "What was the point of coming after me?"

"We can't control Audrey," Jordan said so matter-of-factly it was like a slap. "But you can see, can't you, Nathan, how important it is that she go into the Barn? We can't make her. But we could control you-Audrey listens to you. You were our ace in the hole, our bargaining chip to make sure when the Barn arrives, that Audrey does the right thing."

What happened next stabs sharp and serrated, a different kind of pain to the dark bruises inflicted by the way the words _the Barn_ sink into her flesh, black and swollen, making themselves known with dull twinges at the odd movement, in quiet moments. This new pain, sharper, shallow but more immediately painful, stabs deep the instant it is so clearly spelled out that Nathan is once again (always) a target because of her. The instant Nathan's brows furrow with skepticism, doubt, derision at the Guard's judgment, as he asks, as if he can't quite help himself, "Why me, then? If you needed someone Audrey listens to, why not go after Duke?"

It pierces, deep, raw, rubbed and worried until it oozes.

Audrey tries to focus on the revelations about the Barn, about the finality of how inextricably linked she is to the Troubles, even on the way Jordan curled her lip at Duke's name and spat that the Guard would never sully itself by going to a Crocker (though there's fear, there, too, layered underneath her anger and scorn). Or maybe in the way Dwight showed up out of breath and disgruntled, ready to lock Nathan away, and could only be persuaded against it when Nathan asked Ginger to command him to tell only the truth.

"My name is Nathan Wuornos," he said firmly and distinctly. "And I am not the skinwalker."

Better, even, to think on the moment after Audrey came back from reuniting Ginger with her father, watching her Trouble fade away, dissolved by her relief and love (settled and comforted, _fixed_ by her love in a way Audrey has denied both herself and Nathan), walked back toward the cells just in time to see Dwight letting Jordan go free."

"We can't afford a war with the Guard," Dwight said implacably. "If we hold Jordan, we set ourselves against them and split this town into pieces behind open battle-lines."

"Whatever you need to tell yourself," Audrey gritted, but looking at Dwight, remembering all the warnings he'd given her about the Guard targeting Nathan, knowing just how vulnerable Nathan had been in Jordan's power, Audrey lets a little bit of her fury leak out. "But, Dwight," she said, "you'd better decide which side of those battle-lines you're really on, because even if they're hidden right now, those lines are already set. So if you're still letting the Guard control you, at least admit it to yourself."

"I think I know a bit more about the state of this town than you do." Unconcerned, Dwight brushed past her. "Trust me, I'm doing the right thing here, and I think you'd realize that if you looked at the bigger picture."

"I would," Audrey said to his back, "but apparently I never get to stay here long enough to see it."

His step briefly checked, but he still walked away. And Jordan was still free. And there was no justice for Ginger, or her dad, or Nathan.

All of those memories, images, irritations swirl, dream-like, through her mind. All of them, ephemeral as her existence, drift away, leaving behind that look of doubt and disbelief clouding Nathan's eyes.

She brought him back from the dead-_twice-_-but the first he doesn't remember and the second he wasn't alive to see her devastation, hear that confession wrenched from her.

Everything she's done to save him, everything she's given up for his own good... She thinks of Dwight telling her about the big picture, how that didn't minimize her anger or sense of betrayal in the least, and knows that Nathan won't care either-even if he knew about any of it. Which he doesn't. Because she hasn't told him.

For a while, for too long, she thought the skinwalker had killed him and made his form into a puppet (and if there's anything Nathan's _not_, it's a tool of others, a puppet to bow to the whims of others, a servant to kneel before a will not his own). She thought, for an eternity, that Nathan was gone forever, his strength and his enduring faith, his kindness, all of it wiped away while she was off somewhere else, completely unaware.

She thought it. She believed it.

Because she built a wall. Because he let her, even helped her. Because she has to dole out her remaining time with him like the last few drops of a painkiller to a dying soldier.

He doesn't know. He has no idea how much he means to her (but the Guard does, the town does, and how is that fair when she and Nathan are supposed to have no secrets between them?).

"Nathan," she says.

He barely spares her a glance, completely absorbed in his desperate perusal of their case.

"Nathan."

"If you cleared everyone close to you of being the skinwalker, then we just have to narrow down a new list of suspects."

Audrey pushes up from her desk. Rounds it (removing at least one obstacle between them). Stands closer to Nathan than she's let herself get since she boldly reached for a kiss.

"Nathan," she says a third time, and finally the frenetic energy coursing through him eases a bit. He turns to her, shoulders rounding, defenses dropping, walls crumbling.

And that's all without her even touching him.

Suddenly, almost violently, Audrey is filled with the desire to see how much more she can affect him, learn his responses to anything, everything, _without_ touch, with touch. She wants _him_, him in every day, every way, without timelines or secrets or regrets.

"You're okay," she realizes all over again.

"I'm fine." A line appears between his brows. All Audrey can think about, then, is reaching up to draw a finger down that crease. "You know...you know that everything I said about you leaving...that wasn't me. I still haven't given up. We're going to find a way. The chief said that things were different now. James Cogan knows a way to end the Troubles _without_ you leaving."

"I know." Her smile is small, genuine, more real than her name. "Trust me, Nathan, I know that wasn't you. You always believe in me."

As if only now realizing how close she is, how intently her eyes are fixed on him, Nathan's arms fall slack to his sides. "Well...you've never given me a reason not to."

"Nathan..." It's as if every moment she's been here, every moment she's been _Audrey Parker_, has been to lead her here to this place in their shared office, to this moment as they stare and stare and cannot look away, to this breath of pine and ink and maple. To step even closer and hover there, on the brink, the threshold of so much more.

Nathan is dazed, disbelieving, as if he thinks he's dreaming (Audrey's not so sure she isn't; she has never been this brave in the waking world).

"Drive me home?" she asks.

He nods.

Getting into the Bronco is like coming home. Sitting next to Nathan (closer to him than to the door, and she'd think he didn't notice if she didn't know that Nathan is always fanatically aware of the proximity of others). Listening to the silence between them (no longer awkward or painful, but familiar, comforting). Letting her worries and fears and regrets slough away until she feels light and (almost) unburdened.

"Come in for coffee?" she asks.

He nods.

It's right, somehow, walking into her place with Nathan at her heels, alert and wary as if searching for danger (not that she can blame him: the last time he came in, there was a mess left behind by her kidnapper; the last time he was here, she kissed him just a day before breaking his heart). Before he can do more than pause, Audrey takes his wrist and guides him to the couch, where he sits, tall and nervous and perfect, while she makes them coffee that probably doesn't taste any good (she's had this can of grounds since she first moved in here; Nathan's more than likely the one who gave it to her). They sit together, then, knees pressed close, hands cradling heated cups, each sneaking sidelong glances of the other.

"Stay tonight?" she finally asks (the question she meant all along).

He nods.

Tonight, he doesn't sleep on the couch. Instead, he lets her tug him to her bed, lets her slip under the covers before he stretches out over them. He shudders when she turns into him, warms when her hand slips into his, melts into the mattress when she tucks her head in the crook of his neck. His reactions pale, though, in comparison to how much having his form silhouetted against her affects _her_.

How can she possibly forget this? Surely she will remember him no matter what (_I will always love you_, imprinted on each every cell in her body).

That night, with her world condensed down to the contours of his body (with her world expanded to fit him and all the endless possibilities there are outside the Barn), Audrey's sleep is free of nightmares.

* * *

A/N: Do you know how hard it is trying to make a feasible situation where Audrey would doubt Nathan? It really makes me appreciate the trust between them all the more because, wow, was it hard to manipulate this storyline into place! I always thought it would be interesting to see what would have happened if the Guard had succeeded in getting Ginger to control Nathan. Originally, there was going to be a lot longer storyline around this, but I just could not make it believable that Audrey wouldn't KNOW something was going on immediately, so it got drastically cut. Which is fine since this installment of Between The Lines is already WAY longer than the first two!

As always, hope you enjoyed and don't hesitate to let me know what you think!


	8. Chapter 8

She's startled awake by a sharp movement that jostles her whole body. Surrounded by maple and pine, she's not scared or disoriented. Nathan's here, with her, and though his eyes are wide in the morning sunlight, she doesn't see any discomfort (any regret). If she had to guess, she'd say that in their sleep, she probably moved, brushed some of her skin against some of his, and the shock of it jerked him awake.

"Parker," he says, his voice sleep-roughened, so beautiful that she is suddenly sick with wanting tens of thousands more days waking up to this, hearing him say her name, looking at him looking back at her with _that_ look in his eyes.

"Good morning." She's determined not to let this get awkward (not to let them slip back behind the vestiges of that wall), so she smiles at him. "How about pancakes?"

His lips twitch upward (a touch of relief that she's not running away either). "Only if I get to make them. If your coffee last night is any indication, I'm a safer bet."

"Wow, low blow," she scoffs through laughter. "That means you have to make the coffee too."

"Already planning on it." There's a gleam in his eyes she hasn't seen in too long. That and his warmth (her own warmth that must be the first he's felt since Ian Haskell took his Trouble away so temporarily) makes it hard to roll away from him. In the end, he's the one who finally stands and ducks into the bathroom with his belt and shoes in hand.

Outside her apartment, there are a thousand things she should be doing. Five days left. So little time to figure everything out and help all the people still waiting for her. But. But if she _does_ only have five days left, then when she leaves, the Troubles will leave with her. And right now, Nathan's alive. He's alive, and he's hers, and the Guard blame him and the Rev's followers hate him and the town ignores him and the skinwalker is probably keeping an eye on him...and he's safest with her, right here, at her side.

(Somehow, if she only has five days left, she can't think of a better use of those remaining hours than to make sure Nathan is happy and safe.)

Eventually, Audrey realizes that Nathan's been in the bathroom for a long time, long enough for her to drag herself out of bed and dress and check her phone. It's been a while since their few days together at his house, but she doesn't remember him taking this long to get ready in the mornings, particularly before pancakes and without any clean clothes.

"Nathan?" She knocks at the door. "Nathan, you okay?"

There's no answer.

"Nathan!" she calls again (the skinwalker, the Guard, the Rev's men, anyone, everyone, all the people who don't seem to see Nathan the way she does). Her gun's in her hand, panic clawing at her throat. (She remembers standing outside his bathroom and watching for smoke or the smell of ash to alert her that the killer was burning him alive from the inside out.)

Still nothing.

Audrey kicks the door in, gun raised, finger on the trigger.

The first thing she notices is blood. Blood on the sink, dripping down in pinkish trails to puddle with the water on the floor. The faucet's running and there's blood all over Nathan's hands. His eyes are frighteningly blank. Frenzied. Fixed on his arm.

On the tattoo.

No ashes and smoke this time. No flames or charred flesh. No crazed serial killer with a Trouble.

Just betrayal and disillusionment and pain. Just Nathan's own red-stained fingernails clawing strips down his forearm. Just deep scratches peeled through the tattoo Nathan believed meant helping the Troubled, protecting the defenseless, fixing the broken.

"Nathan," Audrey breathes, and only then does he seem to become aware of her presence. And then, a second delayed, of what he's done to himself.

The embarrassment is so plain on his face, his humiliation so acute, that Audrey almost retreats just to pretend that she hasn't seen just how _not_ okay he really is.

But that hasn't worked before. In fact, it's only made things worse, leaving her scarred deep and Nathan believing he's alone.

"You know," she says as she sets her gun aside in favor of gauze, "there are easier ways of getting a tattoo removed."

He doesn't respond, but he also doesn't pull away when she goes to dab ointment on his scratches, so Audrey counts it as a win. Gradually, as she focuses on the scratches ripped into his arm, Nathan's breathing calms, goes from ragged to steady; in turn, Audrey's own heartbeat slows back to nearly normal.

"I don't think you should get it removed," she finally murmurs. "This symbols means to guard, Nathan, to protect, and that's what you've always done for me, for the people who need it. Don't let them take that away from you."

"Your guard." His voice is low, raspy, his eyes on the floor. "Lately, I've felt more like your opponent. Willingly or not, it seems like we're always on opposite sides now."

"We're not!" she cries.

"Then don't leave. Don't let the storm or the Guard or the Troubles take you away. Haven needs you. The Troubled need you." His voice catches in his throat. "_I_ need you."

"And I'm here." Cradling his hands in hers, Audrey feels her own throat closing up. "Nathan, I...I'm sorry that I pushed you away. I thought...I thought it'd be better-easier-if you didn't care so much when-"

"I care." It's as much a promise as an admission, a statement of fact and a lifelong vow all rolled into one. But as soon as he makes it, he retreats, deflating slightly. "Not that it matters. I haven't been able to find James or the skinwalker-everyone's using me against you-I thought the Guard would help me, but instead they...they could have made me _hurt_ you. Some Guard I am."

"But you never give up. That's amazing, Nathan."

He quirks a brow, too purposely casual. "My stubbornness?"

"Your tenacity," she says, following his retreat (maybe just a bit stubborn herself). "Your devotion. I don't think you know how much I depend on that. On _you_."

Their eyes catch, lock, unravel everything between them until Audrey has never felt closer to another person (surely,_ surely_, memories or not, this is unique in all her lives; only Lucy and maybe Sarah, surging with her love of James, could come close, Audrey is sure).

"Audrey." His exhale on her name stutters against her cheek, his hands actually move to wrap around hers (to _hold on_), and Audrey forgets about her expiration date. Right now, there is nothing other than this. Her apartment swirls around them, a shifting melange of colors, Nathan's scent mingling with hers, all of it making her dizzy.

Dizzy and slow, and his blood is on her hands and he's trying to tell her something even if he can't quite get it out and...

And Audrey doesn't want their moment to be like this, not with Nathan, not when he means so much to her (_I always have loved you_, in her own broken voice whenever she tries to shy away). Nathan isn't something she wants to just fall into, incidentally, just because. He's the one she chooses, voluntarily, knowingly, of her own free will, because she _wants_ to. He's worth a forever, and even if she can't give him that, he's worth more than a dizzy moment and a blurred morning.

She's not stupid. She knows there will never be a _perfect_ time. But there will be a _right_ time and this isn't it.

Either Nathan sees her decision in his eyes or he comes to the realization on his own (whatever he's trying to tell her caught up behind his silence), because he leans back when she does, lets go of her hands when she releases his, stands in tandem with her.

"I'm not going to give up," she promises him (the promise he's been waiting for since he first learned she was fated to vanish), and she thinks it means more to him than any dizzy kiss would have.

* * *

It's hard to focus on the progress bar on her computer screen rather than Nathan leaning down beside her, his face directed toward the screen while their eyes flit shyly toward each other, grazing and missing and seeking all over again. He's so close she imagines there is a magnetic field keeping them just so close but no closer, drawing and repelling in equal measure so that they are stuck, mesmerized into motionlessness.

The beep of her computer alerting them that the composite has been completed jolts both of them. Audrey feels the hairs on her arm raise in reaction to Nathan's proximity, but she forces her attention to the screen.

"All right," she says, "time to find out what this skinwalker's been building."

"_Who_ she's been building," Nathan corrects.

For all the holes in her memory, Audrey really didn't expect to recognize the Frankenstein body the Bolt Gun Killer's been putting together piece by grisly piece.

But she does. More than recognize the face, Audrey can put a name to it.

"Arla Cogan."

"Cogan?" Nathan frowns. "Like James Cogan?"

"He was married. Duke and I found a picture of their wedding-the back of the photo said James and Arla Cogan."

"The skinwalker is...what? Your daughter-in-law?"

Audrey can't help but glare. "Do _not_ call her that."

"But it makes sense, right? Didn't your kidnapper tell you that she loved him too?"

"Yeah, but..." Audrey swallows, not quite sure how to put her revulsion, her compassion, into words. "James must have loved her. I mean, to marry her, he must have wanted to spend his life with her. Maybe they didn't even know about her Trouble at the time. But then James died or disappeared, and Arla...turned into the Bolt Gun Killer. A monster, and all because someone she cared about was gone, taken away for no reason."

Nathan squints at her for a long moment (her skin prickles under the combined temptation of his nearness and his close regard). For an instant, she'd almost swear there was a secret in his eyes, but then he snorts and the moment passes. "If you're trying to say that you think I'm going to turn into a serial killer if you disappear, don't bother. You're not going anywhere. Or," a twinkle gleams in his eyes, hidden behind a deadpan expression (and if it's forced, neither one of them will admit it), "if it will keep you here, I guess go right on ahead suspecting me of having murderous tendencies."

Surprised into a laugh (and it may be strained, too, but at least she isn't spiraling in a downward slope of what-ifs and could-have-beens), Audrey shakes her head. "That wasn't what I was trying to say, but keep talking like that and we'll see if _I_ have any murderous inclinations."

"Oh, you do." Nathan stands to retrieve the printout of Arla Cogan's picture. "I've seen you at a baseball game when your team was losing, Parker-everyone should be scared of you."

"When?" Audrey demands, but she already knows the answer, can picture the day in her head, back when she went to a game because Chris was there coaching, can see Nathan sitting in the stands opposite her.

Abruptly uncomfortable (desperate not to bring Chris Brody into the room with them), she quickly says. "And anyway, I've seen you when you're on the edge of a deadline, so don't pretend that you can't get ultra-intense and hyper-focused-both very good traits to have if you're looking to start a new villainous career."

"Since you're not going to disappear, I guess we'll never find out."

"Nathan." Audrey waits until he looks up from his close study of Arla's picture (she hasn't missed what he's admitted, purposely or not, in comparing him and Audrey to James and Arla, a married couple). "If there's one thing you're not, it's a killer."

A strange expression flits across his face, something dark and unfamiliar that turns his shadow of a smile into his habitual brooding expression. "Audrey," he says, "back when you were taken, I... There's something you don't know. More than one something."

"Ooh, a secret?" Audrey manufactures a grin (anything to dispel the tension blanketing the sparks she's been so enjoying between them). "Like your decoupage?"

"When you were taken, I...I thought it was Duke. The skinwalker left enough evidence to distract me by going after him, and I fell right into the trap. I went to confront him. With a gun. And if Wesley Toomis's Trouble hadn't interfered...maybe I _would_ be a killer."

"Not that I believe that, but...why are you telling me this?"

"Because," he squares his shoulders, "you've been saying these things like...like you think I'm someone I'm not. Someone effective and..._good_."

"And you don't think you're good?" Audrey demands, bristling.

"I'm saying that until you came to Haven, I let life pass me by because it was too hard to break free of the mold they made for me. I'm saying that all the people I've helped have been because of you. I'm saying that I could never be what Haven needs, that I don't know the right things to do or say. I'm saying that there's something that happened, something in the past, that you should probably-"

"So what? So you're not perfect? Nathan, I know that. But you _are_ good. I don't care what happened in the past to make this town treat you the way they do, you helped the Troubled way before I got here. You talk to people even when they treat you like a pariah. You throw yourself in the line of fire all the time to save people." Audrey ignores all caution in favor of taking his hand, watching him unfold (his arms falling from across his chest, his shoulders curling in toward her, his face tilted down), and say, "You're the best man I know, Nathan. Trust me," she smiles, heart thumping madly when he stares with that _more_ pouring out of him, "I don't let just anyone be my partner."

Duke's name is on his lips; she can all but see it there, a stone ready to be heaped up on the detritus of that fallen wall between them. But he swallows it back, sets the stone aside in favor of a tiny smile, and remains unbent, open and vulnerable and hopeful.

And for the first time in a long time, Audrey chooses to believe that these will not be their last moments.

* * *

An evening spent with Claire, even if just to try to narrow down the skinwalker's current disguise, sounds perfect (or as perfect as she'll get since Nathan said he'd be busy all night at the Herald tracking down leads in the papers from 1983). Audrey could use a few hours of friendly banter and Claire's unique blend of confronting issues without undue pressure. (A part of her, pushed to the side and ignored, whispers that with only a little over three days left to her, these might be the last hours she really gets to spend with Claire.)

It doesn't take long for the same two words that fell from Jordan's lips to tilt her world all over again (to serve as a gravestone for the friend Audrey never looked for but valued and cared for anyway).

_The Barn._

Audrey hates the words, the images evoked by them, the thought that this strange structure is enough to endanger Nathan and inflict pain on Vince and Dave and prove that Claire Callahan (Audrey's friend, Haven PD's therapist, help to the Troubled) is dead.

"Hush," Claire (_not_-Claire) says, her hand on Audrey's wrist-and Audrey's blood runs cold. Roslyn and Tommy and Grady and Will and countless women (_Nathan_, two gunshots to his chest and only a miracle that he is here now). A masked figure raining blows down on her, asking questions that left her lost and adrift without compass or anchor.

(And James? James who was struck down from behind, stabbed in the back, left for dead with a monster still bearing his name. Did this woman, this murderer, murder him? Was he her first victim?)

With thoughts like that weighing her down, turning her bones to cement, with images of how terrified Claire must have been in her final moments, Audrey almost welcomes the blow that sends her reeling down into darkness populated only by ghosts of herself and a beach where her son was both given to her and taken away.

* * *

Glass litters the floor. The shards catch the light and sparkle, casting illumination over Lucy's piano-and over Nathan. His hand is the warmth supporting the back of her head, his arm the support that props her upright, his face that is painted over with ragged fear.

"Audrey!" he breathes when he realizes she's awake. "What happened?"

"Claire." Somehow, saying it out loud makes it more real than the headache drumming a tempo through her skull. "Claire's the skinwalker."

No. She said that wrong (the skinwalker is pretending to be Claire; Claire is not the evil monster that treats lives as if they are only clothes on a shopping rack), the truth so terrible that it jumbles and fractures, too heavy for her tongue to speak aloud.

It doesn't matter, though. Words spiral away from her when Nathan pulls her up against him in an awkward hug. His warm breath stutters against her brow. His arms are steady, even as his heart races dangerously fast against her breastbone.

Maybe it's wrong for him to be so openly relieved when he's just learned that Claire is dead (and Audrey remembers when she first met Claire, how she avoided her because she didn't want another mourner at Audrey Parker's end; now, in the worst way, she's gotten her wish: Claire won't be there to note her disappearance, to _care_ that she is gone). But Audrey can't bring herself to be offended by Nathan's single-mindedness.

She lets herself sink into his embrace, reaches out to _hold onto_ him (because as awful as it is, as terrible a person as it makes her, Audrey's relieved, too, to know that Nathan's the one still here to hold her together and anchor her in place).

"We know who she is now," Audrey murmurs into Nathan's collar. "We have to find her before she becomes someone else."

With a deep breath, Nathan pulls back. "I'll put out an APB. But we both know that she has everything she needs to become Arla Cogan again."

"And I only have a few more days to lead her to James." At Nathan's set look, Audrey adds, "That's what she'll be thinking anyway."

Nathan helps her as she stands, one hand unwavering against her spine, the other cupping her elbow. Every nerve in her body is on alert, straining toward him, overwhelmed by his touch, by his nearness, by the raw emotions exposed in his eyes.

But her own eyes must be more guarded because Nathan steps away, lets go, firms with resolve (a gradation as useless to note as to observe that the sun is more sun-like today). He's on task, focused, so determined to save her.

If only she could believe this could last.

* * *

There's no sign of Claire, no hint of Arla (or someone else just building a weapon to use against James the way the Guard tried to use Nathan against _her_), and the hours trickle away. When Audrey gets the call that there's a body down at the high school, all she can think is that it is her last chance.

"You don't have to be here," Nathan tells her. "I can handle this if you want to go after-"

"I miss working with you," she says. With only a little over two days left, she has no time for anything but truth. "And besides, if I only have a couple days left to me, I'd rather spend them with you."

The truth is so much more effective than all her lies (she should have known that, should have learned that lesson from all the obstructive secrets and misleading lies Haven keeps from her; should have remembered that it is Nathan's honesty that has kept her going no matter what the Troubles throw at her) and does more to affect Nathan in a moment than all her months of lying, rewriting every emotion in him, shining outward from him like a beacon.

"Okay," he says softly. From anyone else, a lukewarm response. From Nathan, everything she could wish.

* * *

Last case, last chance, last days. It's a mantra Audrey can't escape. It takes all her attention, demands her focus, keeps her skin prickling with the need to do _something_ and fixes her in place lest the wrong footfall send her spiraling into oblivion.

All of that changes, though, when she catches a glimpse of black hair and dark gloves, tattoo marked on pale skin. Jordan McKee, watching Nathan from afar. Audrey spots her once from across the street, twice across from the high school, a third time just outside the station. If the first sight jarred her free of her mental countdown, the next jolts her into action.

"They're targeting Nathan," Audrey tells Dwight. "They're going to blame him for everything that happened."

"I told him to stay away from the Guard. You told him to stay away from the Guard. Vince and Dave told him to stay away from the Guard." Dwight shakes his head. "He didn't, and now this is the result."

"Great," Audrey bites out. "I'm sure that'll be a real comfort to him when they kidnap him and lock him up and torture him for information he doesn't have."

Most of the time, Audrey's not quite sure what to make of Dwight. For all Garland's strange irascibility, he and Audrey had clicked in a way she didn't notice at the time. But Dwight is more of a mystery, a bit aloof, always masked behind a permeable wall he's erected between them. But every once in a while, he looks beyond that wall, and whatever he sees is too close to the truth for her comfort, his eyes far too incisive, his observations troubling.

"Are we still talking about Nathan?" he asks.

Audrey shrinks away. Months, _months_, later, and still she cannot shake the image of that dark form standing over her while her hands tug uselessly against her restraints. Cannot stop feeling the ache in her jaw and the bruise on her cheek and the gashes in her wrists. Cannot erase the whisper of what she thought was a doomed woman in the next room over, helpless and kind and forever outside of Audrey's reach.

"He doesn't deserve that," she finally says.

Dwight's expression is far too kind. "Neither did you."

Which derails her completely, and later, when she confronts him again, he's too busy with some business with the Teagues, always evading promising any protection for Nathan. Even Dave sidles away without making any guarantees (not that this surprises her), and Duke won't admit that she might not be there to watch out for Nathan herself.

The fact that she is still the only person willing to stand up for Nathan, after everything he's done for this town, is even more depressing than the final days that slip through her fingers like water.

* * *

Their last case together. The last time Duke will be pulled into trouble with a capitol T. The last time she'll get to see Nathan and Duke reminisce about their shared past (even if just for a few moments, rife with glares and blame and bygones not quite allowed to be bygones). The last cup of coffee Nathan will bring her. The last chance she has to learn more about Nathan's life and past (to care about exactly how accustomed he is to being shoved to the edges of any and every group). The last opportunities she has to make sure he knows that he means everything to her (an invitation to dance, his usual reluctance to accept, her murmured comment about the shy ones-the pariahs, the geeks, the _best_ ones-just to reassure him that she chooses this, _wants_ this, and a dance that combines her favorite things: a case about the Troubles, investigative work with her partner; and Nathan, alive and safe and sinking into her touch, even leaning closer of his own accord to brush his cheek against hers).

Twenty-four hours left and now, at nearly the end, Audrey chooses to forget the looming deadline. Better to let loose, to relax and do what she _wants_ rather than what's most prudent. Better to spend her final hours storing up memories _worth_ being stolen.

And it's been so long, too long, since she and Nathan have been able to work together. She almost forgot just how good things can turn out when they (and Duke) all come together to work on a case. Robby looks to be in store for as much of a happy ending as anyone in Haven ever gets, Duke's restored to his regular self, and the skinwalker (_Arla,_ the monster, the daughter-in-law, the killer, the wife) seems eager to ensure Audrey has as many hours as are left to her.

For a last day, it's certainly not the worst (though her heart beats longingly, a hollow echo of_ James, James, James_).

"There's still another way," Nathan tells her that night, as if he can sense her resignation. "We'll find it."

She stares up at him, lit on one side by the soft golden warmth of the _Gull_ and on the other by the cloaking silver shadows of moonlight. (She wonders, if they stand here long enough, will she be able to see the flare of the falling meteors reflected in his eyes?)

In this moment, there are a multitude of possibilities, all of them shimmering there like rainbows scattered off the surface of a seemingly placid ocean. If she reaches for them, plays hot fingers through their ephemeral colors, they will vanish, as elusive as a concrete future. But if she remains perfectly still, breathless and poised, they will remain there, too, trapped in an instant of possibility (of choice).

There's an image (oh so real) of them saying good night and parting ways, both off to their separate sleepless night.

There's a mirage (oh so lovely) of Nathan stepping close and cupping her cheek in his hand and bending to press his lips against her own.

There's a second where she thinks of asking him to drive her-not to anywhere in particular, just endlessly driving through dark roads and along winding cliffs, the familiar rumble of the Bronco's engine all that sounds while their silence speaks volumes their mouths have never managed.

There's a glimpse (oh so impossible because it is too much like saying goodbye and Nathan would never allow it) of her taking his hand and leading him upstairs, of her final midnight hours spent teaching him the contours of his body, learning the edges of her own, inventing secrets for just the two of them.

So many possibilities, all of them so close...all of them so far away.

The moment stretches, elongates, then snaps, and all the rainbows disappear (forever).

On her last night in Haven, Audrey walks upstairs alone.

* * *

Moments later, Audrey sits at her table with a serial killer and listens to a story of desperation and grief and rage and blame and yet more desperation. She wants to shoot Arla for even daring to say James's name, and she wants to find James and hug him tight and take all his hurt away. (But this is her last night and there is a gun on her and Nathan is still downstairs and so she does nothing.)

Hours later, she walks to a campsite in the middle of nowhere and sits across from her...her jailor? her warden? her escort?...and listens to a warning so casual, so conversational that it throws everything into sharp relief, makes it all so real that it becomes, ironically, _surreal_. She wants to run. She wants to fight. She wants to weep. She wants to rage. (If she had a lifetime, she would do them all, but she has only these dwindling hours and so she does nothing at all.)

A couple hours past that, and she stands in a barn (an empty space where all her memories go to die; where she will become as blank as the Barn's interior), finally, _finally_, face to face with her son as he tells her what must be (what she refuses to accept as anything other than) lies. She wants to hug him close while assuring him that her heart beats far too strongly for her to ever hurt him, to _ever_ attack him no matter the provocation. She wants to brush his hair back from that familiar brow, stare into eyes sea-blue and sky-gray, and soothe his fears with a lullaby. (But he's hers and _not_ hers all at once, tantalizingly familiar and startlingly strange, and so she can bring herself to do nothing.)

She stands beside Nathan (hours later? moments? seconds? time passes, or maybe it doesn't pass, in strange ways here at the end of Audrey Parker's life) and recognizes a truth that burns and melts and comforts and hurts all at once. "He's your son," she says (Sarah, Sarah, _Sarah_ who touched Nathan, reached him in a way Audrey couldn't, who wasn't afraid to grab hold of what happiness she could claim).

"_Our_ son," Nathan says, and how can that be the exact right thing to say? (_Sarah_, who is, was, will be Audrey, who made something shine in Nathan so that when he returned to the present, he looked at her and still knew her, was not surprised by Audrey where Sarah had been, or Sarah where Audrey would be; he looked at her, looks at her, and _knows_ her.)

"Why didn't you tell me?" she can't help asking (and wishes she had more time to learn, to remember next time, that whenever there are secrets in his eyes, it is because she has touched him in some way she can't understand).

Nathan looks away, helpless and defeated. "I know how that conversation would have gone," he says dully (and she's run out of time to convince him beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is the reason her heart beats, that her veins pulse to the tune of _Nathan_).

She wants to go to him. Wants to claim him as Sarah did. Wants to take his hand and run away with him, far, far away from Troubles and Barns and meteor storms. (But he is good and just and would not go and there is no place where she can escape from herself-her _blank_ self-and so she does nothing.)

Later (who can say how much later, she has given up trying to puzzle it out; what does it matter when the timer has already reached zero?), she chases James into a memory. Nathan tugs her back with sentences that trail away and half-hearted diversions, but it's the beach and here in the Barn, she can remember her dreams of a picnic on a sunny day. Nathan is behind her and in front of her and the sight of Sarah and him, him and Sarah, freezes her in place. Soft touches, savored kisses, slow movements (she was right, so right, in that hotel room with Duke, when she knew that a jacket coming off would set off universes of chain reactions in him, because even the sleeve of her, _Sarah's_, dress sliding off her shoulder takes long moments, and Nathan, _past-Nathan_, shudders and folds down over her, reaching out in response to her, _Sarah_, pulling him in), and Audrey cannot remember this, but she can feel it in every nerve of her body.

_Audrey_ wants that, that moment, that Nathan, that memory. (Sarah got to have him, got to have James, carry him beneath her twinned heart; she got so much that Audrey never will have.) She wants to turn to Nathan and make her own memories with him (but Sarah lost him, and she had to give up her own baby; she had everything and she had it all taken away from her, and Audrey is suddenly sure that none of her other selves have either had so much or had so much stolen from them, and how ironic is it, that the incarnation who was happiest was also the most bereaved?) She wants to sit both Nathan and James down on either side of her and let her echoed heartbeats resolve into one, stronger rhythm in tune with theirs. (But that's all impossible and she's so _tired_ of failing, of _losing_, over and over again, so she doesn't even try.)

Later still, Audrey chases James out of another memory, Nathan falling behind and vanishing, and watches him smile at Arla, then draw back in revulsion, then throw himself between Audrey and death. She had a son, she has a son, she had a son-bizarrely, all she can think is that she wants a flower so she can pluck the petals away one by one (the Haven-bizarre equivalent of he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not) until only one is left and she'll finally know one way or the other whether the Colorado Kid is alive or dead. She holds him in her arms, and watches his eyes melt from defensive anger to vindicated love (she's seen the same transformation in eyes the same color, the same shape, only with Nathan, she felt nothing at all maternal), and croons a snippet of lullaby (realizing with each note that she and Sarah are alike now: both of them had Nathan for too brief a time and both of them felt James slip away from them). She wants to know why everything she touches dies. She wants to understand how she can be so crushed and devastated and broken by the tiniest speck of pain in James's eyes. (But none of this can be explained or understood or quantified, and so she knows nothing.)

And finally, Audrey cradles her son in her lap and listens to the answer she's been looking for since Nathan told her she would vanish in a blaze of falling stars and Duke told her that her time was too short. And she knows that none of it mattered. All of Nathan's promises and her assurances and Duke's help and Dave's gambit and Arla's murders. All of it redundant. She's failed, over and over and over again, because there is no other way. because she was meant to fail here, too, and now she is conditioned to accept it.

She wants the Troubles to end. She wants Duke to be unburdened and Dwight to be safe and Nathan to feel. She wants Haven to be an actual haven for God's orphans.

But the cost...oh, the cost is far too high to ever pay.

And so, in the end, Audrey does nothing.

* * *

On a hilltop in front of a gray Barn, Audrey gives out the goodbyes she's been unconsciously crafting for fifty-one days. Dwight, still hanging on to that eroding cliff, refusing to look beneath him at the long fall. Dave and Vince, old pros at this, knowing her and learning her and giving her up and no wonder they are so closed off, so impossible to faze with mundane confrontations.

And finally, Duke (her heart's already full, already twinned, already beating double time, but there is, sometimes, a murmur that shapes Duke's name).

The consummate survivor, the adept conman, the pirate with a heart of gold. Still offering to fight the odds for her, still trying to lie to them both, still risking his own life to protect her. Everything in this town has both tried to force them together and rip them apart, but none of it could stop her from loving him.

"I'm sorry I won't remember you when I come back-especially Colorado," she says, and kisses him on the cheek (a might-have-been, a could-have-been, if things had been different; if Nathan had not pulled her from her car and squinted at her badge and looked at her as if waiting for something). A smile, a hand over his own steady heartbeat, a last breath of salt and metal and bravery.

And her hand drops to her side. And Duke steps back. And they fall away from each other.

* * *

Only one more goodbye left to earn Audrey Parker's eternal end. The hardest one.

Nathan had tried to follow her outside, but she'd spun a fear of the Barn not letting him back in and he'd let her leave him inside (he knows, more than most, what goodbyes look like, and he would have fought to keep her here, not knowing the cost, and even if he knew, being all too willing to pay it, which is why he must _never_ know).

"What's going on?" he asks her when she steps back inside her prison. "Did they have anything to help?"

"No." She says it quietly, but there is nothing but space and silence around them (and James, healing somewhere; and Howard, watching from an aloof distance) and the word echoes with portentous weight.

He knows. He must know. James is gone and there is no ulterior solution (not for him to know) and she is standing in the Barn while meteors crash to the earth and burn.

He knows. He just can't accept. (It's all right, though, because he always hesitates at the threshold; he waits for the second invitation, and when she will not give it-and she won't, not this time-he will let her go.)

"Audrey," he says, so small. So broken. "Please."

Words are useless. Words only hurt or obfuscate or distract.

She's tired of words. If she has to fail at everything else, she wants to succeed in this, at least, this last, most important, most painful goodbye.

Audrey steps into him (remembers him pulling her from her teetering car), frames his face in her hands (remembers that first hug in darkness safe from shadows, that first touch and all the ones that came afterward, too few, a wealth of many), rises on her tiptoes (remembers a stack of articles to make Audrey Parker real and an address to give her answers and a kiss that was meant for his lips but landed on his cheek and still meant everything), and slants her mouth over his (remembers trying to walk away, and knowing she couldn't, and turning back to him, _running_ to him).

He is hurt and desperate and already grieving, but he does not freeze with startlement this time. His arms wrap around her and his face tilts down toward her and he kisses her back, all devotion and faith and steadfastness (and only knowing his death is the alternative, only remembering the joy in his eyes when he realized he could feel again, makes her able to keep hold of her determination to leave him).

He kisses her, his whole body inclined to her, and when her fingers brush along his neck, when her mouth opens beneath his, he shudders. A tremor that eases some quiet insecurity deep within her (this is why she wanted the goodbye inside, after all, because he can feel _everything_ here, and if he lets her go, he will be able to feel everything for the next twenty-seven years, but still he holds on so tightly and trembles at her touch as if nothing at all has changed, as if she is still all he wants to feel for the rest of his life).

But then she steps away. Back. One step, another, his arms falling away, and distance is strange here, he's already so far away. Unreachable.

"I'm not leaving, Parker," he promises. "I'll come with you. I'll stay here with you and James."

Audrey doesn't need to see Howard shaking his head to know that won't work (anything that sounds too good to be true usually is).

"It's all right," she tries, though her tears probably prove the lie. "I'll be with our son and you'll live your life."

"Parker!" He's reaching for her, but Howard's between them, blocking him from advancing across the gulf that stretches between them. "You promised you wouldn't leave me," he cries. "I'm not leaving either. I'll die before I let you go."

"I know," she sobs, and then plays the only trump card she has: "Howard," she says. "I'm ready."

"Parker!"

Too late. Howard takes him outside-a blink and Nathan is gone, leaving Audrey alone in a vast eternity of nothing.

Time stretches as she waits for Howard to come back, for her memories to be taken away, for blessed ignorance to be granted her.

She can't break down, not yet, not ever, because if she does, she will stride to that door and push it open and flee into Nathan's waiting embrace. But if she just stands here within sight of the door, the temptation will grow too strong, so she wanders instead, a wraith not quite departed. She searches for James and finds Sarah instead.

Dave and Vince, young and not nearly so guarded, their cynicism not yet engrained. Dynamite and another desperate plan (she cannot help but wonder how many failed attempts there have been to keep her in Haven). But unlike Nathan, they take their failure mostly in stride, transitioning quickly to farewells.

"James's father," Sarah says, jerking Audrey's wandering attention back (she can still smell the pine and maple syrup that clung to Nathan and rubbed off on her when she tried to do the same; she wonders if Sarah thought of the same smell, here at her end). Sarah's smile is quiet, private, unbearably sweet. "He's not even born yet."

Audrey can't look away from that face, _her_ face, cataloging every inch of her smile and the look in her eyes, comparing it to her own face and heart and soul (and she has so carefully avoided looking into mirrors when Nathan is around, but it doesn't matter, because now, looking at Sarah, she knows exactly what she looks like when her heartbeat is displayed openly across her face).

"How can that be?" Vince asks behind her, but Sarah's not paying any more attention to him than Audrey is.

"Nathan," Sarah whispers, her hand on her belly. "Nathan and James Wuornos."

The names hit like a cannonball, like that dynamite on a delayed timer, and reeling back, Audrey lets the scene disintegrate into the past, leaving her nothing more than a lone island in a sea of white (but she imagines that if she turns to look behind her, she will see a line of reflections stretching into the past, all just slightly different, all unequivocally her).

Except...it's not just that memory that's vanishing. The walls are blurring, the floor melting to static, the roof becoming a jigsaw puzzle with pieces disappearing.

"Howard!" she calls. "Is this supposed to be happening? Howard!"

As if his name is a cue, the fracturing wall flickers with a picture of him, a kaleidoscopic image of the hill outside. Howard standing in front of the door with Nathan confronting him, gun drawn, and Duke, Dwight, Dave and Vince, and Jordan all arrayed behind him (cavalry or ambush?).

"I can't destroy the Barn," Nathan says to Howard, "but what about _you_?"

In an instant, in an eternity, Audrey watches, nothing more than a prisoner, as Nathan raises his gun, gold flashing at his belt, Duke yelling behind him, Jordan raising her own weapon, already pulling the trigger. Maybe Nathan was bluffing, maybe he wasn't (Audrey doesn't think even he knows), but now, with one, two, three holes ripped into his flesh, his hand is forced.

Audrey's screaming (one hole from a day that was erased, two holes when Arla decided he was expendable, now three gaping wounds, and every time, every time she brings him back, fate retaliates by upping the stakes), and Nathan's falling (Audrey's banging at the shimmering walls), and Nathan's gun goes off, again and again and again and now suddenly it all makes sense because repetition is key. Repetition is everything. Repetition is the name of the game.

She disappears to be rewritten again and again and again.

Nathan dies to be brought back again and again and again.

Duke helps her to the surprise of everyone again and again and again.

The Troubles leave and come back again and again and again, an endless cycle.

Nathan lets go, doesn't hold on, waits for that repeated invitation and fades away if it doesn't come. Again and again and again.

Repetition and cycles and loops and a punishment that may not be and a choice she makes again and again and again.

And then the cycle breaks.

Nathan doesn't let go. Instead, he holds on.

And the world explodes around her in a blaze of falling stars.

* * *

A/N: So we come to the end of season 3 - one of my favorite finales of all time and oh so hard to put down in a story! Anyway, as soon as I started thinking about how I wanted to craft 'Allies,' I decided that I wanted Audrey kidnapped at the beginning, taken against her will, and then have an interlude with Nathan; and then at the end, there would be an interlude with Nathan (so much darker than the first) before Audrey would, of her own free will, walk into a form of kidnapping. Don't know if it exactly worked out, but this last chapter did probably turn out to be my favorite.

If any of you are still reading by the end of this lengthy tale, thanks so much and I hope you're enjoying it (and letting slide my creative, and absent-minded, liberties). I look forward to seeing you in the season 4 installment of 'Between The Lines,' hopefully coming somewhat soon-ish.


End file.
